The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c15.s1.19

c15.s1.19

The extent to which Sorokin's interpretation of Hindu sensatism has been shunted off the reasonable position may be gauged from the following statement:⁵ "Even in such seemingly purely secular works as the great Hindu treatise on politics, the *Arthaśāstra* ascribed to Kauṭilya we do not find a purely secular, empirical and morally cynical standpoint so pronounced as in many Western works beginning with Machiavelli's *Prince*. The standpoint of the *Arthaśāstra* is sensatism mitigated by pure ideationalism; that is, it is idealistically rationalistic in its epistemology as well as in its ethics and politics."