Text · Sanskrit treatise on statecraft
Arthashastra
/ɐrt̪ʰɐɕaːst̪rɐ/
Also known as Arthaśāstra, Kauṭilyam Arthaśāstram, Kautilya's Arthashastra, Arthasastra
A Sanskrit treatise on government, law, economy, war and espionage, in 15 books, 150 chapters and 180 topics, about 5,300 sentences in all. It names its compiler as Kautilya or Vishnugupta, and later tradition made him Chanakya, Chandragupta Maurya's minister, but the text is now read as a compilation finished in the first centuries CE. It fell out of use after the twelfth century and came back only in 1905, when a palm-leaf copy reached the Mysore Oriental Library.
- Date
- -200–300
- Function
- Text & inscription
- Confidence
- Qualified / contested — Attribution to Chanakya rejected by the main studies since 1965
Worth knowing
Max Weber wrote in 1919 that compared with it Machiavelli's The Prince is harmless. Buddhist monasteries kept it: it is mentioned or quoted in the Spitzer Manuscript from the Kizil caves in China and in the Bajaur birch-bark scrolls from the north-west.
Authorship and date are contested. McClish and Olivelle see an earlier compilation of the 1st century BCE to 1st century CE, expanded and redacted by Kautilya or an anonymous author in the 2nd or 3rd century CE; R. P. Kangle (1965) accepted the traditional Mauryan attribution. The identification of Kautilya with Chanakya (traditionally 375–283 BCE) began under the Guptas and has been rejected by the main studies since 1965.
Connections (5)
- Traditional linkChanakya / Kautilya
The Arthashastra names its compiler as Kautalya or Vishnugupta; the name Chanakya never appears in it. A verse near the end credits the treatise to the man who rescued the country from the Nanda kings, and that is what led later readers to identify Kautilya with Chandragupta Maurya's minister. Patrick Olivelle treats the verse as a later interpolation, and Thomas Trautmann points out that none of the earlier sources on Chanakya mention him writing the Arthashastra.
- Traditional linkChandragupta Maurya
Tradition reads the Arthashastra as the handbook of Chandragupta Maurya's state, and R. P. Kangle (1965) saw no convincing reason to doubt that it was by the Kautilya who helped him to power in Magadha. The link was first drawn under the Guptas, a dynasty that used the names Chandragupta and Gupta to present itself as heir of the Mauryas. Against it, the text mentions Chinese silk, named for the Qin dynasty founded in 221 BCE, after Chandragupta's time.
- Historical linkPataliputra
The Arthashastra (2.3.8–9) forbids wood in city defences because of the danger of fire. Megasthenes, however, described Mauryan Pataliputra as ringed by a wooden wall with 64 gates and 570 towers, and the fortifications excavated there are timber. Patrick Olivelle, following Dieter Schlingloff, uses the mismatch as evidence that the treatise was not written by a minister in the Mauryan capital, even though its fortification chapters otherwise match the archaeological remains closely.
- Historical linkMysuru
Lost after the twelfth century, the Arthashastra resurfaced in Mysore. In 1905 a Tamil Brahmin from Thanjavur presented a palm-leaf copy to the newly opened Mysore Oriental Library under Benjamin Lewis Rice, and the librarian Rudrapatna Shamasastry recognised what it was. He published English translations in instalments in the Indian Antiquary and the Mysore Review from 1905, the text in 1909 and a full English translation in 1915; modern study of the treatise starts there.
- TransmissionKucha & the Kizil caves
The Spitzer Manuscript, more than a thousand palm-leaf fragments found in 1906 at the Kizil caves by the third Turfan expedition, is the oldest surviving philosophical manuscript in Sanskrit, carbon-dated to about 130 CE (80–230). Most of it is Buddhist, but it also refers to or includes sections of the Arthashastra. Harry Falk and Ingo Strauch place it in a habit of Buddhist monasteries collecting Hindu texts, seen again in the Bajaur birch-bark scrolls from the north-west.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Arthashastra"; "Spitzer Manuscript". Patrick Olivelle, King, Governance, and Law in Ancient India: Kauṭilya's Arthaśāstra (2013); Mark McClish, The History of the Arthasastra (2019); R. P. Kangle (1965).
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