The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c14.74

c14.74

All the same, the strictest watch should be kept on the vassals—the Sâmantas as they are called. All their secrets must be ascertained through spies, through prostitutes, through all other conceivable means, fair and foul. The most shameless falsehoods and immoralities might be employed to keep them disunited. Nor should the secret dagger or poison be spared in case of need. On all this Kauṭalya dilates at great length and in a manner which might have shocked Machiavelli himself. He cannot be taken as an exact mirror of existing conditions. Here, as everywhere else, his imagination, his turn for systematisation, his genius for classification are discernible. But he leaves no doubt that the ordinary state in his time comprised many feudatories whose relations with the suzerain were often clouded by suspicion and occasionally characterised by ferocity and treachery on one side or the other.¹