Theory of Government in Ancient India (Post-Vedic) c2.1

c2.1

Indian philosophy has long been recognised in the Western world as presenting original solutions for the problems of spirit and matter, and as exhibiting in the Vedānta a classical type of mysticism, which has attracted adherents far beyond the bounds of India. Appreciation of the great merits of the Kāvya literature is unfortunately limited by the difficulty of the language, for the Court poets are essentially artists in diction and metre whose delicate and subtle effects are lost in translation into an analytical speech, but in this field Indian achievement has always been admitted by competent judges. The claim, however, that the political literature of India deserves serious attention is new. It owes its origin in large measure to the fortunate discovery of the Arthaśāstra ascribed to Chāṇakya, minister of the great Chandragupta, creator of the first Indian Empire of history. It was natural that the find should be welcomed as affording us a trustworthy means of checking the account of the Empire given by Megasthenes the Greek envoy who often visited the monarch at his capital, Pāṭaliputra, and both in Europe and in India the genuineness of the ascription of the work has still convinced champions. But this theory has, among many other things, the fatal disadvantage that it compels us to believe that the Indian Bismarck, when, in his old age, he recorded his impressions of politics, chose deliberately to shut out from his mind all that appertained to the acquisition and government of an Empire, and to lay down maxims which contemplate only a state of moderate size. Unhappily we do not know with any certainty to what exact period the work should be referred, but we may agree with the view of one of India's greatest scholars, Sir Ramakrishna Bhandarkar, that it cannot be earlier than the first or second century A.D. while it is unquestionably to be placed some time before 600 A.D. Recognition of the difficulties of the current ascription by Professor Beni Prasad has enabled him to present the valuable material of the work in its true perspective, and this fact gives at once a special importance to his able, elaborate, and carefully thought-out presentation of the theory of government in ancient India.