The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c11.s1.t29.2

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.