Kautilya's Maxims
24
Gambling
(ArS 3/20:3-7)

The Teachers: In gambling cases, the lowest fine for violence shall be imposed on the winner, and the middle fine for violence on the loser. For the loser, being foolishly desirous of winning, will not be able to stand the loss [and thus will not be inclined to repeat his offense].

Kautilya: No. If the loser is to be punished with a double fine, no one will approach the King in such matters, and it should be noted that most gamblers cheat.

In the Teachers' view, both the winner and loser are liable to penalties. Then gambling as such must be illegal in this period, and we are to envision court cases as based on a denunciation of the winner by the loser. The loser would presumably have hoped to retrieve his losses, most likely by proving his accusation and collecting some sort of restitution from the winner, or reward from the court. The Teachers' policy is manifestly illogical, and its framers seem to acknowledge this in giving a reason for their rule. They claim that their rule will discourage the loser from future gambling. Kautilya remarks that their rule will instead have the effect of discouraging losers from denouncing winners, with the result that gambling will not be brought to the attention of the authorities and so penalized. He does not object to fining both parties, remarking that both are likely to be cheaters (so that question of right is in principle a toss-up). He merely objects to imposing extra penalties on the probable informant. The presumed dishonesty of both parties, if not in the instance before the court, then in general, prevents the rendering of a judgement that is materially to the advantage of either. There is no question of right in an inherently wrongful act.

For the justification of a rule in terms of its effect on the person sentenced, compare Maxim #23. Kautilya is concerned rather to keep the legal mechanism itself in viable condition.

ArS 3 goes on to prescribe for legalized gambling (with fines for cheating, not for gambling as such). That chapter had begun (ArS 3/20:1-2) with provision for a Director of Gambling, who can impose fines for gambling except on officially approved premises. This indicates a development between the situation Kautilya addresses, where gambling was apparently prohibited, and the one implied by the post-Kautilyan parts of the ArS record, where the state asserts a monopoly on gambling, and profits from it while at the same time controlling it.

The co-optation by the state of previously ignored or forbidden money developments (there, principally trade) occurred in China during the social and economic transitions of the 05th and 04th centuries.

The reader will have noticed (or can see from the Overview) that the Kautilya maxims, arranged by theme, tend to go in pairs. It further emerges that some of the pairs can be construed as containing between them a rule of law which is not apparent from either in isolation. Such constitutive pairing is a device of structure that is carried to great lengths in the Analects (see Brooks Analects Appendix 1). Against that structural tendency, we note that this particular maxim, the last in this section, stands unpaired in the ArS. An unpaired section final maxim, which we call an "envoi," is also a standard Analects structural device, but has the character of a retrospective summation. This piece is simply unpaired, and is not an example of the Analects-type formal device.

 

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

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