Kauṭilya

Kauṭilya is the name attached to the Arthaśāstra, the most detailed treatise on statecraft to survive from ancient India. Tradition identifies him with Chanakya, also called Vishnugupta, the Brahmin minister who helped Chandragupta Maurya overthrow the Nanda kings and found the Maurya empire in the late fourth century BCE. Modern scholars such as Patrick Olivelle argue that the text as we have it was compiled in layers between roughly the second century BCE and the third century CE, and many doubt that Kauṭilya and Chanakya were the same person. The Arthaśāstra covers government, taxation, law, espionage, diplomacy and war, and treats the security and prosperity of the kingdom as the ruler's first duty. Lost for centuries, it was rediscovered in a manuscript at Mysore in 1905, and its hard-headed realism has often been compared with Machiavelli's.

Key ideas

• The state has seven elements: the ruler, ministers, the countryside and its people, the fortified city, the treasury, the army and the ally.
• In foreign policy a king's neighbour is a natural enemy and the neighbour's neighbour a natural friend, forming a circle (maṇḍala) of states.
• Material welfare (artha) is the foundation on which righteousness and pleasure depend, so the ruler must secure prosperity.
• The king's good lies in the good of his subjects, not in what pleases him personally.
• Punishment (daṇḍa), applied justly, protects the weak from the strong.

Major works

• Arthaśāstra (attributed; compiled c. 2nd century BCE – 3rd century CE)
• Cāṇakya-nīti (later collections of maxims traditionally ascribed to Chanakya)

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