Arthashastra

01Vishnugupta and the Nandas

Tradition knows the author by three names: Kautilya of the Kutala gotra, Chanakya the son of Chanaka, and Vishnugupta, his given name. He was a brahmin teacher of Takshashila. At the court of the last Nanda king of Magadha he was insulted and driven from his seat, and he vowed to uproot the dynasty. He found the young Chandragupta, trained him, and with him overthrew the Nandas around 321 BCE. Vishakhadatta’s play Mudrarakshasa tells the end of that contest. The Arthashastra’s own closing verse says the shastra was made by the one who, in anger, rescued learning, arms and the earth from the Nanda kings.

02When it was written

Indian tradition places the book in Chandragupta’s reign, in the late fourth century BCE, and the text names Kautilya as its author again and again, often to overrule earlier teachers with ‘no, says Kautilya’. Since the 1920s scholars have argued over this. Some, such as R. P. Kangle, accepted the Mauryan date. Others, from Thomas Trautmann’s word-count study of 1971 to Patrick Olivelle in 2013, read the present text as a redaction made between about the first century BCE and the third century CE from older material. Both sides agree that it draws on schools of arthashastra older than itself, whose views it quotes by name.

03How the book is built

It opens with a salutation to Shukra and Brihaspati, the gurus of the asuras and the devas, and says it gathers into one all the arthashastras the earlier acharyas composed for gaining and guarding the earth. Its first chapter is a full table of contents: 15 adhikaranas, 150 adhyayas, 180 prakaranas, 6,000 shlokas in measure. The text is mostly terse prose sutras, each chapter closing with a verse or two. Five schools and many named teachers are cited, the Manavas, Barhaspatyas, Aushanasas, Parasharas and Ambhiyas, along with Bharadvaja, Vishalaksha, Pishuna and others. The last book lists the 32 tantrayuktis, the devices for composing and reading a shastra.

04The king’s first duty

The first book is about the king himself. He studies four sciences: anvikshiki (philosophy and reasoning), the three Vedas, varta (agriculture, cattle and trade) and dandaniti (government). Before he rules others he must rule his senses, giving up the six inner enemies, kama, krodha, lobha, mana, mada and harsha. His day and his night are each cut into eight parts, each assigned: petitions, accounts, ministers, spies, sleep. Dharma, artha and kama are to be pursued together, but ‘artha alone is chief, says Kautilya, for dharma and kama rest on artha.’ And in plain words the book puts the welfare of the people above the king’s own pleasure.

05Danda and the law of fishes

Why should a king punish at all? Kautilya answers with the law of the fishes, matsyanyaya. Where no rod of justice is held, the strong swallow the weak, as big fish eat small. Danda wisely applied joins people to dharma, artha and kama; too harsh a rod frightens them, too soft a rod is despised, and only a just one is honoured. The courts of the third book follow from this. Three judges sit together and hear disputes over contracts, deposits, marriage, inheritance, boundaries, wages and debts. Law has four feet, says the text: dharma, vyavahara (evidence), charitra (custom) and the royal edict, each later one overriding the one before.

06Treasury and the superintendents

The second book, the longest, is a working manual of the state. It sets out the duties of some thirty adhyakshas: the superintendents of the treasury, mines, metals, the mint, gold, the storehouse, trade, forest produce, the armoury, weights and measures, tolls, weaving, agriculture, liquor, the slaughterhouse, courtesans, ships, cattle, horses, elephants, chariots, passports and the city. It plans the fort and the capital street by street. It knows officers will steal, and lists forty ways of embezzlement. One famous verse says it is as hard to know when an officer is taking money as to know when a fish swimming in water is drinking it.

07Seven limbs and the circle of kings

The sixth book opens with the seven prakritis of the state, the saptanga: the king, the minister, the countryside, the fort, the treasury, the army and the ally. A weakness in any one cripples the rest. Beyond the border lies the mandala, the circle of kings. The conqueror (vijigishu) stands at the centre; his immediate neighbour is his natural enemy, the king beyond that neighbour his natural friend, and around them stand the middle king and the neutral king. Against them he chooses among six measures, the shadgunya: peace, war, staying put, marching, seeking shelter and the double policy of peace with one and war with another. Much of books seven to thirteen is cold arithmetic about when each pays.

08Spies and envoys

The king sees through his spies, says the first book: cara is his eye. Kautilya sets up a whole service. Some spies are stationed, posing as a student, a lapsed ascetic, a householder, a trader or a holy man with shaven head; others roam, as poisoners, nuns, wandering mendicants. They watch ministers, test their loyalty with planted temptations, report on the mood of the cities and work inside enemy courts. Envoys are ranked by the powers they carry, and are told to deliver the message even at the risk of death. The thirteenth book describes how to take a fort by spreading rumour and division before a single soldier moves.

09Lost and found

Dandin, Banabhatta and the Panchatantra all speak of Kautilya’s shastra, yet by the nineteenth century no one had a copy. In 1905 a Grantha-script palm-leaf manuscript was handed to the Oriental Library in Mysore. Its librarian, R. Shamasastry, published the Sanskrit in 1909 and an English translation in 1915. Julius Jolly and Richard Schmidt’s edition followed at Lahore in 1923–24, and J. J. Meyer’s German translation in 1926. In the 1960s R. P. Kangle of Bombay University brought out the critical edition, translation and study that scholars still use. The Mysore manuscript is kept at the Oriental Research Institute there.

10Read across the world

Kamandaka’s Nitisara opens by bowing to Vishnugupta and recasts his teaching in verse; Somadeva Suri’s Nitivakyamrita and the niti sections of the Puranas carry it further. After 1909 the book changed how the Mauryan age was studied, and it has since been put into Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Bengali, Marathi and most other Indian languages, as well as English, German and Russian. Max Weber, lecturing in Munich in 1919, said that beside it Machiavelli’s Prince was harmless. Indian strategists read it still; the Indian Army’s Project Udbhav, begun in 2023, studies Kautilya alongside other old Indian texts on war and statecraft.

What it contains

1. 1
   1. Vinayadhikarika

   The training of the king: the four sciences, the company of elders, mastery of the senses, choosing ministers and priests, testing their integrity, setting up spies and guarding the royal household. It ends with the king’s timetable and his duty to rise and act.

2. 2
   2. Adhyakshaprachara

   The longest book, on the departments of state. It covers settling new land, building forts and the capital, and the duties of the superintendents of the treasury, mines, mint, trade, forests, weights, agriculture, liquor, ships, cattle, horses and elephants, with the forty ways of embezzlement.

3. 3
   3. Dharmasthiya

   Civil law and the judges who apply it. Contracts, marriage and the duties of spouses, inheritance, houses and boundaries, debts, deposits, slaves and labourers, partnerships, sale, gifts, violence and gambling all have their chapters.

4. 4
   4. Kantakashodhana

   Removing the thorns: criminal law under the pradeshtris. It protects artisans and traders from fraud, guards against fire, flood, famine and plague, and lays down how suspects are found, questioned and punished.

5. 5
   5. Yogavritta

   Secret conduct against treacherous high officers, and ways to fill an empty treasury in an emergency. It also fixes the salary scale of every servant of the state, from the chief minister down.

6. 6
   6. Mandalayoni

   The source of the circle: the seven limbs of the state and their excellences, and the circle of kings around the conqueror. Short, but the base of all that follows on foreign policy.

7. 7
   7. Shadgunya

   The six measures of foreign policy worked out case by case. When to make peace, when to march, how to judge an ally and how to divide the spoils of a joint campaign.

8. 8
   8. Vyasanadhikarika

   Calamities that strike the limbs of the state. It weighs which is worse, a flawed king or a flawed minister, and covers the vices of hunting, gambling, drink and women.

9. 9
   9. Abhiyasyatkarma

   Preparing a campaign: weighing power, place and season, the kinds of troops, and dangers in the rear. It warns against revolts at home while the army is away.

10. 10
    10. Sangramika

    War itself: the camp, the march, protecting the army, open and covert battle, rousing one’s own troops, and the arrays (vyuhas) of infantry, horse, chariot and elephant.

11. 11
    11. Sanghavritta

    Policy toward the sanghas, the republics and confederacies such as the Licchavis and Mallas. It shows how to divide them, since united they are hard to defeat.

12. 12
    12. Abaliyasa

    What a weaker king does against a stronger one: diplomacy, the war of counsel, killing enemy commanders, stirring up the circle against the aggressor, and secret means.

13. 13
    13. Durgalambhopaya

    Ways of taking a fort: sowing dissension, drawing the enemy out, spies inside the walls, siege and assault. It closes with how to pacify and win over a conquered land.

14. 14
    14. Aupanishadika

    Secret remedies and occult means for use against an enemy, with antidotes for one’s own side. A short book of recipes and charms.

15. 15
    15. Tantrayukti

    The method of the treatise itself: the 32 devices by which a shastra is composed and read, each illustrated from the Arthashastra. The same list appears, with small changes, in the Charaka and Sushruta Samhitas.

Famous verses

प्रजासुखे सुखं राज्ञः प्रजानां च हिते हितम्। नात्मप्रियं हितं राज्ञः प्रजानां तु प्रियं हितम्॥

In the happiness of his subjects lies the king’s happiness, in their welfare his welfare. What pleases himself is not his good; what pleases his subjects is his good.Arthashastra 1.19.34

अर्थ एव प्रधान इति कौटिल्यः। अर्थमूलौ हि धर्मकामाविति।

Artha alone is the chief, says Kautilya, for dharma and kama have artha as their root.Arthashastra 1.7.6–7

स्वाम्यमात्यजनपददुर्गकोशदण्डमित्राणि प्रकृतयः।

The king, the minister, the countryside, the fort, the treasury, the army and the ally are the constituents of the state.Arthashastra 6.1.1

मत्स्या यथान्तः सलिले चरन्तो ज्ञातुं न शक्याः सलिलं पिबन्तः। युक्तास्तथा कार्यविधौ नियुक्ता ज्ञातुं न शक्या धनमाददानाः॥

Just as fish moving in water cannot be known to be drinking it, so officers appointed to a task cannot be known to be taking money.Arthashastra 2.9.33

येन शास्त्रं च शस्त्रं च नन्दराजगता च भूः। अमर्षेणोद्धृतान्याशु तेन शास्त्रमिदं कृतम्॥

This shastra was made by him who in his wrath swiftly rescued learning, arms and the earth that had fallen to the Nanda kings.Arthashastra 15.1.73