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The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c11.s6: Doses of Economic Freedom in the Arthaśāstra

The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c11.s6

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Doses of Economic Freedom in the Arthaśāstra

c11.s6.1

At one point, while speaking of gilds, Breloer makes the categorical statement that the concept of professional freedom (*Gewerbe-freiheit*) is utterly unknown (*völlig unbekannt*).³⁰ At another point, however, we are told that the state planning does not function in any way as a disturbing factor because as a result of long experience "private initiative" was afforded the "widest space," scope or chance. Further, says he, it is not the regulations of planned economy but the incorporation of precautionary measures that furnishes the practical item in the Kauṭalyan system of economic control.

c11.s6.2

³⁰ Vol III. pp. 363, 367, 548.

c11.s6.3

He has not made it clear as to how professional freedom could be entirely lacking although economic planning left loopholes for freedom. Had Breloer sought to place the data of the *Arthaśāstra* in the perspective of the European craft-gilds and gild-merchants as well as the economic policies of the Western states during certain periods of ancient and medieval history, he might have discovered something more universal than the alleged Kauṭalyan patent of "economic planning." He might have felt that there was nothing exceptional or extraordinary in the Kauṭalyan policy, but that certain doses of freedom as well as certain doses of restraint, control and guidance were being normally administered at the same time by the state-systems of the East and the West.

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