The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c15.s1.23

c15.s1.23

In any case, such expressions as “morally cynical standpoint” as well as phrases like “purely secular, empirical” etc. can be applied with the same force not only to the work of Kauṭalya but to the entire range of Hindu economic, legal and political literature. One has only to examine objectively the contents of these documents without the conventional notions imported from the specialists in the history of Indian ideationalism. It is worth observing that the equations between Machiavelli, Hobbes and Hindu political philosophy in regard to the categories more or less identical with those employed by Sorokin, have been established in the Italian scholar Carlo Formichi's *Salus Populi: Sggio di Scienza Politica* (Torino 1908). More damaging for the thesis of Sorokin's *Social and Cultural Dynamics*, in so far as the Indian topics are concerned, is the work by another Italian scholar, G. B. Bottazzi, entitled *Precursori di Niccolo Machiavelli in India ed in Grecia* (Pisa 1914). Bottazzi establishes an equation between Machiavelli on the one side and Kauṭalya the Hindu and Thucydides the Greek on the other. And of course it is clear that Kauṭalya preceded Machiavelli in Machiavellism,⁷ whatever it may mean.