Kautilya's Maxims
Preface

Kautilya is renowned as the architect of the Indian Maurya dynasty (established in c0317), and at the same time, is often condemned as the author of the statecraft text Arthashâstra (ArS). The "Kautilya" maxims, which are cited in the third person in ArS (there is thus no question of his authorship of ArS) do suggest a consistent point of view, implying that they might reflect a single person, and not implausibly a person of Chandragupta's time. Here are some points in favor of that view:

• Most of the maxims are not primary pronouncements. They are reactions to earlier opinions in areas such as law and diplomacy. They also address questions of palace intrigue and dynastic succession. They do not deal with custom or piety as such. The Kautilya of the maxims thus appears to be a synthesist rather than a specialist, but a synthesist with a special interest in maintaining rulership and giving it effect in the real world. As far as it goes, that mental horizon would not be inappropriate for the general advisor of a dynastic aspirant.
• The maxims imply a court of only modest size and complexity. This agrees well with the observations of Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador to the court of the first Maurya ruler, Chandragupta.
• By contrast, the portions of the ArS which do not contain Kautilya maxims imply a more developed bureaucracy, and thus a later period. They comment on areas such as battle tactics, with which the Kautilya maxims do not deal. They go far beyond the situation implied by the Kautilya maxims, and that described by Megasthenes. Instead, they suggest the more advanced situation implied by the Ashokan inscriptions, or by other evidences for the late Maurya state.
• In particular, the many Pali-isms and such other presumptively late features as the mention of Cina [China] do not occur in the Kautilya maxims. They occur only in the surrounding text, or in chapters which contain no Kautilya maxims at all.

This suggests to us that the maxims are plausible as representing the thought of Kautilya, and might have been written down not long after his death in c0300. The rest of the book, by contrast, seems to reflect the later Maurya period. We believe these parts of the book were added subsequently.

The ArS maxims seem to reflect a consistent and early body of Indian statecraft thought, schematically expressed, but in their content probably referring to the end of the 04th century. From those maxims, historians will get a glimpse of India at a moment of transition, and students of modern administration will often find their science anticipated. To both, and to readers in general, they offer a more focused vignette of Kautilya and his predecessors than does the larger, but later, remainder of the Arthashâstra.

We here present those maxims in a slight adjustment of their present ArS order, to reflect what we believe was the arrangement of their first compiler. The philological argument for our order, and for our conclusion that the maxims themselves reflect Kautilya, is given at various points in the commentary, and is summarized on the Argument page. Our commentary to each maxim takes up points of historical interest as well as relevant philological details. We have sometimes added references to analogous passages in the Chinese statecraft texts, mostly from the late 04th and early 03rd centuries. India and China were very different societies in this period, but they were also going through somewhat analogous processes. Not much detailed information is available on either side, but we offer these parallel extracts as perhaps suggestive.

On the philological side, our debt to the annotated translations of Shamasastry (1957) and especially Kangle (1972), on which we have largely relied in place of the Sanskrit original and much of its associated scholarship, is obviously profound. For helpful advice and correction, we are further grateful to Michael Witzel and Patrick Olivelle, and to other members of the collaborative Sindhic Joint Seminar from the year 2000 onward. Further suggestions from readers of this on-line version will be much appreciated, as we continue to study the text and to sharpen our own responses to it.

During his years in Berlin, Fu Sz-nyen briefly studied Sanskrit. He never became fluent in Sanskrit, but his sense of the importance of Indian history for Chinese history is one we share. We think that the Kautilya fragments, with their scholarly interest and political importance, would have pleased Fu Sz-nyen, whose own career combined the scholarly and the political. We have dedicated these pages to him.

E Bruce and A Taeko Brooks
7 March 2001

 

Kautilya's Maxims is Copyright © 2001- by E Bruce and A Taeko Brooks

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