The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c14.s2.6

c14.s2.6

But the only historically authentic, and for the present the most important *nîti* work is a volume of the late fourth century B. C., the *Artha-śâstra*¹ of Kautilya, the finance minister of Chandra-gupta Maurya. This treatise combines the theory of Machiavellian *Realpolitik* with the “blood and iron” statecraft of Bismarck. The dissertations of pre-Kautilyan philosophers seem to have been swallowed up in this volume and it proved be the bible not only of Asoka the Great’s imperialism, but also of the chauvinists of the Vikram-âdityan epoch; for Kâmandaka’s abridgment² of Kautilya’s principles, entitled the *Nîti-sâra*, appears to have been in circulation about the fourth century A. C. And as such it acquired a position like that of the *Prince* of the Florentine diplomat which used to be consulted by every English and Continental statesman of the “New Monarchy” period. The influence of the *Artha-śâstra* is accordingly to be noticed as much in the activities of Premier Bhandi the “king-maker” of the Vardhana House (seventh century) as in those of the Bengali premiers Darbha-pâṇi and Kedâramiśra (eighth and ninth centuries), through whose *nîti*, as the inscriptions assert it, the Pâla Dynasty became for a time the paramount power in Northern India.