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The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c11.s1.t29: Kleinstaaterei

The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c11.s1.t29

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Kleinstaaterei

c11.s1.t29.1

The precursors of Kauṭalya, says Meyer, were dealers in small states, and their philosophies corresponded to these conditions. If Kauṭalya had wished to function as a "mere" compiler or copyist, i.e., introduce nothing new, his philosophy would have run in the same old grooves. But his work, according to Meyer, indicates at several points that it is not adapted to the ancient Indian small states-system but only to a powerful empire. After all, one must remember, argues Meyer, that even Chandragupta's empire was not much different, at any rate, in quite a number of items, from an ancient Indian "small state inflated to colossal proportions." One should not be surprised, therefore, it is to be understood, if one finds the touches of small states here and there in the book. The *Arthaśāstra* can still be the product of an Imperial epoch although one does not find in it exactly what you and I expect to find in an empire.

c11.s1.t29.2

A word may be added in this connection. In the discussions bearing on the Kauṭalya question in my *Hindu Politics in Italian* (*IHQ.*, 1925-26) it has been pointed out that the *Arthaśāstra* is essentially a "philosophical" work (*Kauṭalya-darśanam*). The doctrine of *maṇḍala* (sphere) which involves automatically the plurality of states and hence perhaps might to a certain extent suggest *Kleinstaaterei* is therefore to be taken more as a "logical category", a stock-in-trade of philosophical academies, in regard to international relations, than as a realistic description of the actual foreign politics of a particular epoch or epochs. The professors who are lecturing on the *mores* of the *vijigīṣu* do not necessarily have before them, as explained in that paper, a bunch of pigmies as audience.

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