By Aaryan Panchal

Abstract

This text examines the significance of the discovery of Kautilya’s Arthashastra in challenging prevailing beliefs about political science in ancient India. It explores the wide-ranging topics covered in the Arthashastra highlighting its originality and relevance compared to Western political thought. Additionally, it discusses how the Arthashastra contributes to our understanding of the Mauryan period and undermines misconceptions about the idea of an Indian nationality prior to British rule.

It is generally believed that political science was never a serious branch of knowledge in ancient India. The brooding East was more concerned with metaphysical speculation, and it was up to the West to develop the fundamentals of political thought and political inquiry such as the theory of the state, the nature of sovereignty, the structure of society, good governance, and the judicial system. Due to the interpreters of ancient Indian thought having an imperialistic and Eurocentric bias and due to the political weakness of the ancient Indian community, the idea that Indian thinkers had made no significant contribution regarding the science of politics gained great traction. The discovery and subsequent publication of Kautilya’s Arthshastra in the first decade of the twentieth century dealt a shock to the ignorance that both Western and Indian scholars had buried themselves in and displayed to the world the fertility of the Indian mind regarding the development of the science of politics, especially as an independent branch of knowledge. 

The Arthashastra was discovered in 1904 by Rudrapatna Shamashastri, a Sanskrit scholar and librarian of the Mysore Oriental Research Institute. It was translated into Sanskrit in 1909 and into English in 1915. Much like the discovery of the remains of the Indus Valley Civilisation in Harappa and Mohenjodaro, the discovery of the Arthashastra created a storm and upset the widely held orientalist ideas of uncivilised and unsophisticated rule in ancient India. The Arthashastra is, as the name suggests, concerned with the study of artha which is essentially the sustenance or livelihood of men. Artha in Hindu tradition is one among four goals of individual human existence along with dharma, kama, and moksha. The Arthashastra contains information on subjects ranging from kings, ministers, and spies to cotton, spices, and pearls. From inheritance, divorce, and municipal law to foreign relations, forts, and cities. The Arthashastra is not a theoretical treatise on political science and is entirely addressed to the King, i.e., a single ruler of a state. The book is believed to be written by the figure of Chanakya also known as Kautilya. Almost nothing is known about Kautilya. He probably belonged to Magadha and lived in Pataliputra. There is also speculation that he might have attended the famous Taxila University for his studies. The only record available to us about Kautilya is his monumental work, the Arthashastra. 

Scholars through a spot reading of the book came to the conclusion that Kautilya was another Machiavelli, an Italian diplomat, philosopher, and author who had intrigued the Western world for nearly five hundred years best known for his political treatise, “The Prince.” Drawing such a comparison, however, denies the Arthashastra any originality and relevance and subsumes it within a larger Western political and philosophical thought. Comparing Chanakya to Machiavelli would be an oversimplification since there are monumental differences between the two figure’s thoughts and writings and a fallacy since the former existed upwards of a millennium before the latter. According to Machiavelli, a prince needs only to conquer and maintain his power however for Kautilya, the King’s power had to be used for the economic, social, and spiritual welfare of the people. For Machiavelli, the art of war was the primary concern of the ruler whereas for Kautilya, war was not an end in itself and instead Dharma was the ultimate goal. It was the welfare of the community which was the end for Kautilya’s king. This is drastically different from Machiavelli’s prince who sought to create fear in his people as according to him, men were inherently wicked. Machiavelli was primarily concerned with politics, statecraft, and the art of war while Kautilya’s Arthashastra is versatile, covering wide-ranging topics and matters of importance such as foreign policy and international relations, diplomacy, laws, courts, municipal law, civic duties, public administration, economics, etc. Moreover, it is also speculated that Kautilya under a different name might have authored the famous Kamasutra as well. 

An important notion that was widely held by the Orientalists was that the “idea of India” did not exist prior to the European man’s visit. That there was no idea of an Indian nationality before the advent of British rule. This belief is surprisingly still quite common in Indian academic and public discourse. This belief is a sincere fallacy and has no basis for its reasoning. Moreover, its perpetuation has had immense deleterious consequences that are still being felt today. Further discussion regarding this argument however goes beyond the scope of this article. For our present purposes what is important is how the discovery of Kautilya’s Arthashastra added to our understanding of the Mauryan period which served to add another arrow to the quiver targeting the fallacious notion of the Orientalists. 

Legend has it that Kautilya or Chanakya was humiliated by the Nandas, who were the ruling dynasty during the fourth and the fifth century BCE and took an oath to extirpate them. He adopted a young goatherd within whom he saw qualities of kingship and brought him up to become a warrior and a statesman. The young boy was Chandragupta Maurya and the two of them together established the Mauryan empire, slowly expanding it into one of the biggest empires of the ancient world. Kautilya is supposed to have written the Arthashastra during the long years before he along with Chandragupta Maurya overthrew the Nandas and thus the work has often been cited as an important source for understanding Mauryan times. 

The Mauryan empire extended in the North into Central Asia and in the South into Madurai. The empire also exercised friendly relations with the Cholas, Cheras, and the Pandas as is evident from Ashokan inscriptions. Moreover, the Indian Ocean was well connected with ports extending to Sri Lanka and mainland Asia and connected through land, to Uttarapath, the great trade route of the north, and Dakshinapath, the great trade route of the south. There existed a vast administrative and military system to keep this vast empire in place the details of which are contained in Kautilya’s Arthashastra. The term used by the Mauryans to refer to their kingdom was Jambudwipa and some of the distinguishing features of the state as outlined by Kautilya were the presence of local models of political administration, the unity of temporal and spiritual power, and the coexistence of multiple ethnicities. Territorially speaking no other empire or dynasty in India has ever administered such a large area again and symbolically the symbols from the Mauryan empire have been borrowed by different rulers throughout history all the way to modern India using the Lion Capital of the empire. The Mauryan Jambudwipa can well be thought of as the ancestor of the Bharat of today. The peacock flag of the Mauryans was arguably the first to unify the Indian subcontinent under one political rule and the brain behind the political unification was that of Kautilya whose legacy remains with us in the form of the Arthashastra.    

About the Author

Aaryan Panchal is a second-year student at the Jindal School of Liberal Arts and Humanities majoring in Political Science.