Kautilya Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Kautilya (flourished ca. 300 BCE) is the purported author of the Arthashastra, a sprawling work of political thought dating from sometime between the third century BCE and the second century CE. Tradition states that Kautilya, a poor member of ancient India’s priestly caste, trained Chandragupta Maurya, the first Maurya emperor, and helped him overthrow the Nanda dynasty. After they had achieved victory, Kautilya retired and poured his lifetime of experience into the Arthashastra. Most modern scholars have concluded that Kautilya is an otherwise unknown author who lived under the Maurya, but new archaeological evidence may clarify the origin of this work, much as it has for other ancient Indian texts.

Kautilya’s Arthashastra has only recently garnered much attention in the West, but is usually compared with China’s Han Feizi (ca. 250 BCE) by Han Feizi and Italy’s The Prince (1531) by Niccolò Machiavelli. Although some commentators have criticized the totalitarian nature of the state that it proposes, the Arthashastra contends that ubiquitous government regulation through the rule of law is the best way to achieve material prosperity for all. This goal is enshrined in the name of the text itself. The term artha carries the meaning of material wealth, health, and safety, and the text examines all three of these topics. Shastra means treatise, rules, or general knowledge. Hence one modern scholar proposes translating the title as The Treatise on Material Prosperity. According to the text, government plays a primary role in securing artha, and it advises the ruler on making every aspect of government administration serve this purpose.

According to the text, artha requires wealth, justice, and territorial expansion. To achieve these goals, the state should consist of seven elements, including the king, his counselors and other officials, the treasury, military and police forces, territory and population, fortified cities, and allies. The king’s role is to ensure that each of these elements remains oriented toward the state’s three goals by safeguarding the welfare of the people from both internal and external dangers. Performing this tremendous task requires government control of every aspect of people’s lives, from economic activity to travel and family planning, and the enforcement of a balance between individual wealth and community responsibility.

The Arthashastra helpfully provides lists of specific laws and punishments for each area of regulation. For instance, it details the rules for a national curfew, including circumstances for exempting certain individuals (like midwives and police officers), as well as guidelines for labor contracts and fair prices for various commodities. Enforcing all these laws requires, according to the Arthashastra, an elaborate secret service of professional agents who infiltrate all aspects of life, reporting on and influencing people’s behavior. Rather than wrestling with possible moral implications of this system of strict control, the Arthashastra takes it as given that life will be best for all under this authoritarian system.

Bibliography:

Boesche, Roger. The First Great Political Realist: Kautilya and His Arthashastra. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003.
“Han Feizi’s Legalism versus Kautilya’s Arthashastra.” Asian Philosophy: An International Journal of the Philosophical Traditions of the East. 15 (2005): 157–172.
The Arthashastra. Translated and edited by L. N. Rangarajan. New Delhi: Penguin Classics, 1992.
Singh, Baljit. “The Source of Contemporary Political Thought in India—A Reappraisal.” Ethics 75, no. 1 (October 1964): 57–62.
Waldauer, Charles,William Zahka, and Surendra Pal. “Kautilya’s Arthashastra: A Neglected Precursor to Classical Economics.” Indian Economic Review 31, no. 1 (January 1996): 101–108.

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