Kautilya (Chanakya)

01The vow against the Nandas

The accounts come from later texts, the Mudrarakshasa of Vishakhadatta, Buddhist and Jain chronicles, and the Puranas, and they agree on the core. A learned brahmin, linked with Takshashila, was insulted at the court of the last Nanda king in Pataliputra. He vowed to bring the dynasty down, found the young Chandragupta, trained him, and with him raised an army and took Magadha. The Vishnu Purana states plainly that the brahmin Kautilya would uproot the nine Nandas and anoint Chandragupta. He stayed on as minister, and Jain tradition says he served Bindusara too.

02The Arthashastra found

In 1905 a pandit brought a palm-leaf manuscript in Grantha script to the Oriental Library at Mysore. R. Shamasastry, its librarian, recognised it as the lost Arthashastra and published the text in 1909 and an English translation in 1915. It has fifteen books on the work of a king: taxes and the treasury, the duties of superintendents of mines, weaving, liquor and ports, law courts, espionage, diplomacy across a circle of neighbouring states (the mandala), and war. It names its author as Kautilya and closes by saying it was written by the one who rescued the earth from the Nandas.

Place · Founded, says the Ramayana, by Taksha son of Bharata; excavated cities from c. 6th century BCETakshashila (Taxila)The great city of learning of Gandhara, where Chanakya taught, Jivaka studied medicine and, says the Mahabharata, Vaishampayana first recited the Bharata to Janamejaya. Its three excavated cities, Bhir Mound, Sirkap and Sirsukh, lie outside Rawalpindi.Read →