Hindu Polity: A Constitutional History of India in Hindu Times c7.5

c7.5

§ 2. The sources of our information extend over the vast field of Hindu literature—Vedic, Classical and Prākrita, and also the inscriptional and numismatic records of the country. We are fortunate in having also a few technical treatises on Hindu Politics left to us in the original. They are, however, mere remains of a considerable library, contributed to by a long series of political thinkers and statesmen of Hindu India. The *Artha-Śāstra* of Kauṭilya¹ (300 B.C.), which may be called the Imperial Code of Governance of the Early Mauryas, is such a remnant. It is avowedly based on previous authorities. Such authorities, cited by name in Kauṭilya's Code, number eighteen or nineteen. There are some others mentioned elsewhere. For instance, the *Mahā-Bhārata*, which gives a brief history of Hindu Political Science,² mentions, in addition Gaura-Śiras. The Āśvalāyana *Grihya-Sūtra* mentions one more, Āditya.³ The catalogue of this large number of writers shows that politics had been studied for centuries before Kauṭilya's time, and had become a recognised subject when the *Kalpa Sūtras* were still being completed.⁴