The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c11.s1.t4.8

c11.s1.t4.8

Jacobi cannot conceive the “Indian Bismarck” to have functioned like an “ordinary Paṇḍit” as a teacher of *Arthaśāstra* to the pupils around him. On the contrary, it fits in well with the character of a “great statesman” and a ruler of the state, says Jacobi, that just as Frederick the Great did, Kauṭalya should have dealt with his life’s profession or a part of it in a theoretical manner. If, then, there were a school it could have come into existence not from Kauṭalya the person but from his book. In Jacobi’s analysis it is the school that owed its existence to the book and not the book to the school. In this instance the “school”, said he, is to be understood in two senses : (1) as a series of teachers and pupils and (2) the entire body of adherents to the Kauṭalyan doctrines.