Culture and Society

Abstract

This chapter considers the Arthaśāstra of Kautilya. According to tradition, Kautilya is to be identified with the apparently historical personage Canakya, who is known from Jain traditions as the king-maker of Candragupta; he wrote the Arthaśāstra as a guide for the king in the administration of his empire. The earliest scholarship saw the book as a description of the Maurya polity—an exciting find given the paucity of material, let alone Indian material, for the history of early India. Breloer went so far as to call the work “Candragupta's Magna Carta.” The view remains attractive, and many Indian scholars have been glad of a straw to cling to in the ocean of uncertainty, and perhaps of an Indian text that reduces their dependence on a Greek outsider's information, particularly if they are dazzled by Strabo's attack on Megathenes for unreliability.