Arthashastra

Two names for the text's compilor or redactor are used in the text, Kauṭalya (Kautilya) and Vishnugupta. Chanakya (375–283 BCE), the legendary counsellor of Chandragupta Maurya, is implied in a later interpolation, reinforced by Gupta-era and medieval traditions, which explicitly identified Kautilya with Chanakya. This identification started during the Gupta reign (c. 240 – c. 579), strengthening the Gupta's ideological presentation as heirs of the Mauryas. However, the identification has been questioned by scholarship, and rejected by the main studies on the topic since 1965, because of stylistic differences within the text which point to multiple authorship, as well as historical elements which are anachronistic for the Mauryan period, but fit in the first centuries of the Common Era. The Arthashastra was influential until the 12th century, when it disappeared. It was rediscovered in 1905 by R. Shamasastry, who published it in 1909. The first English translation, also by Shamasastry, was published in 1915.

The Sanskrit title, Arthashastra, can be translated as 'treatise on "political science"' or "economic science" or simply "statecraft", as the word artha (अर्थ) is polysemous in Sanskrit; the word has a broad scope. It includes books on the nature of government, law, civil and criminal court systems, ethics, economics, markets and trade, the methods for screening ministers, diplomacy, theories on war, nature of peace, and the duties and obligations of a king. The text incorporates Hindu philosophy, includes ancient economic and cultural details on agriculture, mineralogy, mining and metals, animal husbandry, medicine, forests and wildlife.

The Arthashastra explores issues of social welfare, the collective ethics that hold a society together, advising the king that in times and in areas devastated by famine, epidemic and such acts of nature, or by war, he should initiate public projects such as creating irrigation waterways and building forts around major strategic holdings and towns and exempt taxes on those affected. The text was influenced by Hindu texts such as the sections on kings, governance and legal procedures included in Manusmriti.

Structure, dating, and authorship

The authorship and date of writing are unknown, and there is evidence that the surviving manuscripts are not original, and are based on texts which were modified and edited in their history, but were most likely completed in the available form between the 1st and 3rd century CE. Olivelle states that the surviving manuscripts of the Arthashastra are the product of a transmission that has involved at least three major overlapping divisions or layers, which together consist of 15 books, 150 chapters and 180 topics.

History of the manuscripts

The Arthasastra is mentioned and dozens of its verses have been found on fragments of manuscript treatises buried in ancient Buddhist monasteries of northwest China, Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan. This includes the Spitzer Manuscript (c. 200 CE) discovered near Kizil in China and the birch bark scrolls now a part of the Bajaur Collection (1st to 2nd century CE) discovered in the ruins of a Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Buddhist site in 1999, state Harry Falk and Ingo Strauch.

The text was considered lost by colonial era scholars, until a manuscript was discovered in 1905. A copy of the Arthashastra in Sanskrit, written on palm leaves, was presented by a Tamil Brahmin from Thanjavur to the newly opened Mysore Oriental Library headed by Benjamin Lewis Rice. The text was identified by the librarian Rudrapatna Shamasastry as the Arthashastra. During 1905–1909, Shamasastry published English translations of the text in installments, in journals Indian Antiquary and Mysore Review.

During 1923–1924, Julius Jolly and Richard Schmidt published a new edition of the text, which was based on a Malayalam script manuscript in the Bavarian State Library. In the 1950s, fragmented sections of a north Indian version of Arthashastra were discovered in form of a Devanagari manuscript in a Jain library in Patan, Gujarat. A new edition based on this manuscript was published by Muni Jina Vijay in 1959. In 1960, R. P. Kangle published a critical edition of the text, based on all the available manuscripts. Numerous translations and interpretations of the text have been published since then.

The text written in 1st millennium BCE Sanskrit, which is coded, dense and capable of many interpretations, especially as English and Sanskrit are very different languages, both grammatically and syntactically. Patrick Olivelle, whose translation was published in 2013 by Oxford University Press, said it was the "most difficult translation project I have ever undertaken." Parts of the text are still opaque after a century of modern scholarship.

Translation of the title

Different scholars have translated the word "arthashastra" in different ways.

• R.P. Kangle: "Artha is the sustenance or livelihood of men, and Arthaśāstra is the science of the means to Artha" "science of politics";
• A.L. Basham: a "treatise on polity"
• D.D. Kosambi: "science of material gain"
• G.P. Singh: "science of polity"
• Roger Boesche: "science of political economy"
• Patrick Olivelle: "science of politics"

Artha (prosperity, wealth, purpose, meaning, economic security) is one of the four aims of human life (puruṣārtha) in Hinduism, the others being dharma (laws, duties, rights, virtues, right way of living), kama (pleasure, emotions, sex) and moksha (spiritual liberation). Śāstra is the Sanskrit word for "rules" or "science".

Structure

The first chapter of the first book is a table of contents, while the last chapter of the last book is a short 73 verse epilogue asserting that all thirty-two Yukti–elements of correct reasoning methods were deployed to create the text; both were probably later added to the original text.

A notable structure of the treatise is that while all chapters are primarily prose, each transitions into a poetic verse towards its end, as a marker, a style that is found in many ancient Hindu Sanskrit texts where the changing poetic meter or style of writing is used as a syntax code to silently signal that the chapter or section is ending. All 150 chapters of the text also end with a colophon stating the title of the book it belongs in, the topics contained in that book (like an index), the total number of titles in the book and the books in the text. Finally, the Arthashastra text numbers it 180 topics consecutively, and does not restart from one when a new chapter or a new book starts. The topics are unevenly divided over the chapters, with some chapters containing multiple topics, and some topics spread over multiple chapters; a peculiarity which betrays extensive redaction, with the division into chapters as a later addition, as argued by Winternitz, Keith, Trautmann, McClish, and Olivelle.

The division into 15, 150, and 180 of books, chapters and topics respectively was probably not accidental, states Olivelle, because ancient authors of major Hindu texts favor certain numbers, such as 18 Parvas in the epic Mahabharata. The largest book is the second, with 1,285 sentences, while the smallest is eleventh, with 56 sentences. The entire book has about 5,300 sentences on politics, governance, welfare, economics, protecting key officials and king, gathering intelligence about hostile states, forming strategic alliances, and conduct of war, exclusive of its table of contents and the last epilogue-style book.

Translations and scholarship

The text has been translated and interpreted by Shamashastry (translation, 1909), R.P. Kangle (translation 1969, textual analysis 1965), Dieter Schlingloff (historical background, 1965, 1967, and 1969), Scharfe (textual analysis, 1968), Trautmann (textual analysis, 1971), Rangarajan (translation, 1992), Patrick Olivelle (textual analysis 2004, translation 2013), and McClish (textual analysis 2009, 2014, 2019), and a selection of Arthashastra-texts by Olivelle and McClish (2012).

According to McClish, writing in 2009, three "major recent studies" have been done on the composition of the Arthashastra, namely Kangle (1965), Scharfe (1968), and Trautmann (1971), whereafter "little, if any, major work has been done on the composition of the Arthaśāstra in nearly forty years." Olivelle published King, Governance, and Law in Ancient India: Kauṭilya's Arthaśāstra in 2013, "taking into account the latest advances in Kautilya studies"; a translation which, according to Richard Davis, "clearly supplants all other translations of this work into English, including those of Kangle (1977) and L. N. Rangarajan (1992)." Olivelle adds Dieter Schlingloff's studies (1965, 1967, and 1969) and McClish' 2009 PhD-thesis as "groundbreaking studies" since Kangle's study from 1965; McClish' also published in 2019 The History of the Arthasastra.

Dating, chronology and layers of the text

Single or multiple authorship

Olivelle (2013) notes that there are two issues with regard to its composition: if it was an entirely original work, and if the present text "is the result of emendations and redactions of the author's original work." The first is uncontroversial, as the Arthashastra itself states at its start that it has been composed by drawing together Arthashastras from former teachers. Regarding the second issue, Olivelle notes that even those who argue for a single authorship, agree that the text contains interpolations and glosses; the real issue is if there were one or more major redactions of the original text.

While Kangle stated that "[i]t is not possible to point out any substantial parts of the present work as belonging to a later age or as the work of a later hand," early on philologists and text critics have proposed that the Arthashastra consisted of multiple layers of redaction. Stylistic differences within some sections of the surviving manuscripts suggest that it likely includes the work of several authors over the centuries. There is also no doubt, states Olivelle, that "revisions, errors, additions and perhaps even subtractions have occurred" in Arthashastra since its final redaction in 300 CE or earlier. McClish:

Specific features, such as the text’s dual division into prakaranas and adhyāyas, the logical disjunction generated by the occurrence of Kautilya’s direct speech in his own text, shifts in style, and the general breadth of the work suggested a more complex compositional process.

To this, Trautmann and Olivelle add the diverse vocabularies used within the Arthashastra.

Overview of scholarly treatments

According to Kangle (1965), echoing Kane (1926), after judging the arguments against the attribution to Chanakya: "there is no convincing reason why this work should not be regarded as the work of Kauṭilya, who helped Chandragupta to come to power in Magadha."

Schlingloff (1967) argued that, "The traditional attribution to the minister Kautilya [Chanakya] is hardly historical, and the compendium probably arose in the first half of the first millennium AD."

Hartmut Scharfe (1968) argued that "the extant Arthaśāstra is the prose expansion of an earlier verse original," dating it to c. 150 CE.

Trautmann (1971) conducted a statistical analysis of words used in the text, concluding that the Arthashastra is a composite work containing the work of multiple authors: "[i]t being shown that the Arthashastra has not one author but several, it follows that it is to be referred to not one date but to as many dates as it has authors." According to Trautmann, approved by Olivelle, the division into chapters, AS 1.1 with its table of contents, and book fifteen, are the work of "a later, tidying and organizing hand, reworking a text already divided by books and topics, and already possessing an adequate introduction in Arthasastra1.2.

Trautmann "provisionally" proposes 250 CE as the date for the compilation of the Arthashastra, pointing to a number of historical elements which make an earlier dating impossible.

Rangarajan (1987), who re-translated the Arthashastra, states in his Introduction that "some scholars have expressed doubt about the authorship of what we now know as Kautilya's Arthashastra and the date of its composition." Regarding the question of multiple authorship, Rangarajan questions Trautman's analysis, pointing to a "uniformity in style" and approvingly citing Kangle that "there is no convincing reason why this work should not be regarded as the work of Kautilya who helped Chandragupta to come to power in Magadha." Yet, Rangarajan also refers to a dating of 150 CE, stating that " Kautilya's greatness is in no way diminished if we choose any date between 1850 and 2300 years ago."

Rangarajan notes that the science of artha (material well-being, livelihood, economically productive activity, wealth) was not developed by Kautilya, but drew from older works that are all lost, and "Kautilya's is the earliest text that has come down to us." One possible reason for the disappearance of these earlier literature on Arthashatra could be the Kautilya's comprehensive treatise that made those works redundant, a possibility also mentioned by Olivelle (2013).

According to Olivelle (2013), the initial text had one major revision, and possibly several minor revisions. Olivelle concludes that the oldest layer of text, the "sources of the Kauṭilya", dates from the period 150 BCE – 50 CE, consisting of separate treatises from separate authors, confirming Trautmann's analysis. The "Kauṭilya Recension" was created in the period 50–125 CE by a historic person named Kautilya, compiling selections from these texts into a new shastra, which was likely titled Daņdanīti, "literally the administration of punishment but more broadly the exercise of governance." By the time of Manu (mid 2nd century) this recension had gained popularity and authority, as it was this recension which was used by Manu.

According to Olivelle (2013), this recension was redacted into the "Śāstric Redaction" (i.e., the text as we have it today) between 175 and 300 CE, and was a major redaction by a scholar who had a good knowledge of the Dharmashastras, bringing the Arthashastra "more in line with the mainstream of Brahmanical social ideology" and the superiority of the Brahmin varna. This author (redactor) added a division into books and chapters, and also added several books, as identified by McClish (2009). He also expanded short, sutra-like statements into extended commentaries in dialogue form. According to Olivelle, "[t]he artificiality of these dialogues has been noted by scholars," and that they disrupt and disfigure the composition. They may have been added to emphasize Kautilya's authorship, presenting him "as someone standing in a long line of Arthashastric authorities, someone who has surpassed them all when he composed his Arthashastra. According to Olivelle, it was this Shastric redactor who "created an Arthashastra out of a Daņdanīti." With regard to dating, Kalidasa (4th–5th century CE) clearly used this Shastric Redaction.

Olivelle rejects the dating to the Mauryan period, and adds the additional argument, derived from the work of Schlingloff, of the usage of wood for the fortications excavated at Pāṭaliputra, whereas Arthashastra 2.3.8–9 forbids this usage in defensive fortications. Olivelle also refers to the coral-argument for the dating of the source-texts; the import of this coral cannot be dated earlier than the first century BCE.

According to McClish (2019), a treatise he calls the Dandanīti was created in the first century BCE by an unknown author, who drew "together a number of disparate sources pertaining to statecraft, added some of his own material, and forged them into a comprehensive treatise." Thereafter, possibly in the third century CE, "an individual who called himself “Kautilya” redacted the Dandanīti. Kautilya added a great deal of new material, including the division into chapters and the addition of several books, recast the text in the ideological image of the dharma literature, and renamed it the Arthaśāstra of Kautilya." The date of the third century is based on a comparison with the Manu Dharmashastra (2nd century CE), which appears to have used the Dandanati, and not the Arthashastra, which means that the redaction of the Dandanati into the Arthashastra took place after the second century CE. This is corroborated by the first substantial Sanskrit inscription, dated at the middle of the second century CE. Since the Arthashastra prescribes inscriptions in Sanskrit, their absence in the centuries directly after 300 BCE is problematic for the traditional attribution to Chanakya, but fits well with an initial compilation before 150 BCE, and a major redaction after 150 BCE. McClish further notes that "[t]he guidelines provided by the Dandanati would have been insufficient to Chandragupta's imperial project," hence, "[t] he Dandanati is not an imperial text." As for the lower limit of the dating, McClish also refers to Levy's coral-argument. With regard to the upper limit, McClish too, following Trautman, refers to the disappearance of punch-mark coins in the second century CE, which are mentioned extensively though in the Dandanati, which means that it was compiled before this period.

Authorship

According to Olivelle, "[g]iven the compositional history outlined above, the very question regarding the date or the author of the AS becomes moot. We have to instead seek dates and authors in the plural for the three major phases of its composition: the sources used by Kauṭilya, the original Kauṭilya composition, and the subsequent Śāstric Redaction." Regarding the original compilation and its later major redaction, three names for the text's compilor are used in various historical sources: "Kauṭilya" or its variant "Kauṭalya", Vishnugupta, and Chanakya.

Kauṭilya or Kauṭalya

The text identifies its author by the name "Kauṭilya" or its variant "Kauṭalya." According to Olivelle, this person was probably the author of the original recension of Arthashastra: this recension must have been based on works by earlier writers, as suggested by the Arthashastra's opening verse, which states that its author consulted the so-called "Arthashastras" to compose a new treatise. Olivelle argues that this must be the real name of the author, because many shastra received an epynomic ascription to a celebrated figure, which is not the case with "Kautilya", a relatively unknown name except as an obscure gotra-name. According to McClish, the original compilation was the work of an anonymous author, while the major expansion and redaction was the work of an author called Kautilya.

Both spellings appear in manuscripts, commentaries, and references in other ancient texts; the original spelling of the author's name has been extensively debated by contemporary scholars, but was not an issue for Sanskrit authors. Vishakhadatta's Mudrarakshasa (4th–8th cent. CE), which uses all three names, refers to Chanakya as kutila-mati ("crafty-minded"), where kutila ("crafty", "crooked") is intended, in which case "the name Kautilya would be a kind of nickname which was given to him on account of the well-known crookedness (kautilyam) of his policy." However, as Burrow pointed out, such a derivation of a masculine noun from an adjective (kutila) is grammatically impossible, and Vishakhadatta's usage is simply a pun. The word "Kauṭilya" or "Kauṭalya" appears to be the name of a gotra (lineage), and is used in this sense in the later literature and inscriptions. Nevertheless, Vishakhadatta's pun may have had unintended consequences, as later Sanskrit texts supportive of his work omit the name Kautilya, while those with negative views are keen to use it.

Vishnugupta

A verse at the end of the text identifies its author as "Vishnugupta" (Viṣṇugupta), stating that Vishnugupta himself composed both the text and its commentary, after noticing "many errors committed by commentators on treatises". R. P. Kangle theorized that Vishnugupta was the personal name of the author while Chanakya (Cāṇakya) was the name of his gotra. Others, such as Thomas Burrow and Patrick Olivelle, point out that none of the earliest sources that refer to Chanakya mention the name "Vishnugupta". According to these scholars, "Vishnugupta" may have been the personal name of the author whose gotra name was "Kautilya": this person, however, was different from Chanakya. Historian K C Ojha theorizes that Vishnugupta was the redactor of the final recension of the text.

Chanakya

A persistent tradition attributes the Arthashastra to the Maurya prime minister Chanakya. The identification is implied at the penultimate paragraph of the Arthashastra, which states, "without the explicit use of the name Canakya," that the treatise was authored by the person who rescued the country from the Nanda kings," that is, the Maurya prime minister Chanakya who according to tradition played a pivotal role in the overthrow of the Nanda dynasty.

Several Gupta-era (c. 3rd century CE – 575 CE) and mediaeval texts also identify Kautilya or Vishnagupta with Chanakya. Among the earliest of these sources, Mudrarakshasa (4th–8th cent. CE) is the only one that uses all three names - Kauṭilya, Vishnugupta, and Chanakya - to refer to the same person. The Panchatantra (300 CE) and Vishnugupta (e.g. Kamandaka's Nitisara (3rd–7th cent. CE) use the name Chanakya. Dandin's Dashakumaracharita (7th–8th cent. CE) uses both Chanakya and Vishnugupta ), while Bana's Kadambari (7th. cent. CE) uses Kautilya. The Puranas (Vishnu (400–900 CE), Vayu (300–500 CE), and Matsya (200–500 CE)) are the only among the ancient texts that use the name "Kautilya", instead of the more common "Chanakya", to describe the Maurya prime minister.

Trautmann points out that none of the earlier sources that refer to Chanakya mention his authorship of the Arthashastra, and Olivelle notes that "the name Canakya, however, is completely absent from the text." This identification seems to be a forgery from the Gupta period. The Guptas tried to present themselves symbolically as the legitimate successors of the Mauryas, even using the names "Chandragupta" and "Gupta", a connection also made in the play Mudrarakshasa, composed in the time of the Guptas. The verse seems to be a later interpolation, and Olivelle proposes that it was an attempt to identify the author of the political treatise, which was followed by the Guptas, with the renowned Maurya prime minister.

Olivelle notes that "Given the later association between the AŚ and Cāṇakya, who is regarded as the prime minister of Chandragupta Maurya, there has been a trend from the inception of Arthaśāstra scholarship to date the text to the Maurya period." Several reasons are given for the persistent scholarly attribution to Chanakya, and the a priori dating to Mauryan times. One reason is the reception by Indian nationalists, who saw it "as evidence of a pragmatic and virile tradition of self-rule in India's past." According to Trautmann, "[n]ationalist aspirations seemed somehow fortified when the existence of strongly centralized empires and native schools of political theory was shown." Furthermore, the identification with Kautilya provided "a link to the most powerful dynasty in South Asian antiquity: the Mauryan Empire," while "[g]iven the absolute paucity of sources for this most intriguing era, many scholars seem unable to resist using the Arthaśāstra as a source for the period, despite a decided lack of supporting evidence." According to McClish, "the desire on the part of Indologists to possess just such a source seems to have exerted, in general, a strong influence on conclusions about the compositional history of the text."

Anachronistic historical elements

Within a few years after its discovery in 1909, scholars questioned this identification, pointing to historical anachronisms and lack of synchronicity with the Mauryan period. R. P. Kangle, whose translation dates from the 1960s, deemed this traditional attribution acceptable, and therefore dates the Arthashastra to Mauryan times. Thomas Trautmann, Olivelle and others reject this identification of Chanakya and Kautilya arguing that it is incompatible with the dating and multiple authorship. A number of arguments against a dating around 300 BCE have been given since 1915. Burrow (1968), Trautmann (1971), Olivelle (2013), and McClish (2019), give the following overview of anachronistic historical elements:

• Small local state: the Arthashastra is intended for a small state surrounded by other small states, and not for an extensive empire.
• Gems and aloe from Ceylon: Hemachandra Raychaudhuri noted in 1919 that gems and aloe from Ceylon are described as pārasamudraka, "from Simhala"; were the text from Mauryan times, it would have used Tamraparni for Ceylon, not Parasamudra.
• Chinese silk: S. Lévi noted in 1936 that Arthashastra 2.11.114 mentions Chinese silk, Cinapatta, "originating in China (Cinabhumi). The Indian name for China is derived from the Ch'in (Qin)-dynasty, which was established in 221 BCE, post-dating the time of Chanakya and Chandragupta Maurya. This means that the Arthashastra cannot be attributed to Chanakya.
• Coral: S. Lévi also noted, in 1934, that Arthashastra 2.11.42 refers to coral imported from Alexandria. This trade flourished in the early centuries of the Common Era. There are no references in Panini and Patanjali, but plenty in sources from the early Common Era. Therefore, "the mention of Alexandrian coral in the Arthashastra is irreconcilable with the attribution of it to Canakya."
• Wine and Hunas: Arthashastra 2.25.24–25 refers to wine, with an etymology derived from the Hunas, which is impossible for a work from the 4th century BCE.
• Greek loan-words: the term surungā, "underground passage, tunnel", is a loanword from Hellenistic Greek surinx, which is not used as such before the 2nd century BCE. Likewise, paristoma (2.11.98), "a kind of blanket or carpet", is a loanword from Hellenistic Greek peristròma, not attested before the third century BCE.
• Written documents: while the Arthashastra often refers to written documents, and treats the composition of written documents in a specific chapter, yet writing may not have existed in India when the Mauryan empire was founded.
• Alchemy and metal-working: there are references to alchemy in the Arthashastra, which is probably a western influence. Also, the level of metal-working described in the Arthashastra does not correspond with the time of Chanakya.
• Civil law: Burrow notes that "The chapter on civil law (vyavahãra) represents a state of development on the same level as that in the Yàjnavalkya-smrti, a work commonly assigned to the fourth century AD."
• Sanskrit in royal edicts: Trautmann notes that Book II chapter 10 ciof the Arthashastra itself refers to the use of Sanskrit in royal edicts, which began in 150 CE, setting an earliest date for the text.
• Defensive fortications: according to Megasthenes Pataliputra was "surrounded by a wooden wall pierced by 64 gates and 570 towers." Olivelle notes that "AŚ (2.3.8–9) forbids the use of wood in defensive fortications of cities because of the obvious danger posed by fire. Yet, while Schlingloff shows that the description of fortifications in the Arthashastra is pretty accurate when compared with archaeological remains, the fortications excavated at Pāṭaliputra, the capital of the Maurya empire, are made of wood," something which would have been impossible if it was the prime minister of Chandragupta had authored the Arthashastra. "The data on the construction of forts in the AŚ (2.3), therefore, must come from a period later than the Maurya."
• Roman dīnāra: Trautmann notes that one of the earliest texts referring to the Arthashastra, the Pancatantra, uses the word dīnāra a Roman coin not used in India before the Common Era.
• Punched-marked coins: chapter 12 mentions punched-marked coins, which disappeared at the end of the second century, setting the latest possible date for that text.

Geography - written in Gujarat

The author of Arthashastra uses the term gramakuta to describe a village official or chief, which, according to Thomas Burrow, suggests that he was a native of the region that encompasses present-day Gujarat and northern Maharashtra, in contrast to Chanakya, who resided in northern India. Other evidences also support this theory: the text mentions that the shadow of a sundial disappears at noon during the month of Ashadha (June–July), and that the day and night are equal during the months of Chaitra (March–April) and Ashvayuja (September–October). This is possible only in the areas lying along the Tropic of Cancer, which passes through central India, from Gujarat in the west to Bengal in the east.

The author of the text appears to be most familiar with the historical regions of Avanti and Ashmaka, which included parts of present-day Gujarat and Maharashtra. He provides precise annual rainfall figures for these historical regions in the text. Plus, he shows familiarity with sea-trade, which can be explained by the existence of ancient sea ports such as Sopara in the Gujarat-Maharashtra region. Lastly, the gotra name Kauṭilya is still found in Maharashtra.