Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c11.s2: Arthaśāstra as a Comprehensive Document of Hindu Polity for All Ages

The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c11.s2

Language
English

Arthaśāstra as a Comprehensive Document of Hindu Polity for All Ages

c11.s2.1

According to Breloer Kauṭalya's work is unique in the Indian culture-world. It is characterized by *Vollständigkeit*, completeness or integrity as a system of public law comprising also, as it does, private law. It is also a postulate with Breloer that there is a large number of constant factors running through all the ages of Hindu polity. The question about the author's personality or name is said therefore to possess hardly any importance in the light of these circumstances. Because of this reason it should be more attractive, says he, to treat the *'Arthaśāstra* as the starting point of discussion on Hindu administration than fight over the question as to whether the treatise was written by the Bismarck of ancient India, the Iron Chancellor of Kaiser Chandragupta, the unifier of India or by some other named or unnamed Anonymus like nearly all the works of Indian literature.¹⁷

c11.s2.2

¹⁷ Vol. III, pp. 2-4.

c11.s2.3

As for the data of inscriptions, they should be brought in later after the groundwork of the study on Hindu administration has been established on the basis of Kauṭalya. It would be putting the cart before the horse should one treat the *Arthaśāstra* as apocryphal and look for miserable crumbs in the wilderness of inscriptions and then triumphantly come back with them to the richly covered table of the *Arthaśāstra*, says Breloer.

c11.s2.4

One wonders as to why Breloer felt it necessary to fling a joke at the student of inscriptions. All inscriptions of course are not genuine or objective accounts of actual facts. But should one happen to hit upon an inscription that is not only authentic but also contains an unembellished statement of events and promulgations, say, like the Roman Twelve Tables there is hardly any doubt that every document of *Śāstra* literature (*Dharma*, *Artha* and *Nīti*) would have to be appraised by reference to this touchstone. Under those circumstances the *śāstras* must follow the inscriptions and not the inscriptions the *śāstras* as authority for positive history. In any case each evidence is to be judged on its own merits.

Linked texts (1)