Arthashastra

Kautilya's Arthashastra (Sanskrit: कौतिलियम् अर्थशास्त्रम्, IAST: Kautiliyam Arthaśāstram; transl. Kautilya's compendium on worldly affairs) is an Ancient Indian Sanskrit treatise on statecraft, politics, economic policy and military strategy. The text is likely the work of several authors over centuries, starting as a compilation of Arthashastras, texts which according to Olivelle date from the 2nd c. BCE to the 1st c. CE. These treatises were compiled and amended in a new treatise, according to McClish and Olivelle in the 1st century CE by either an anonymous author or Kautilya, though earlier and later dates have also been proposed. While often regarded as created by a single author, McClish and Olivelle argue that this compilation, possibly titled Daņdanīti, served as the basis for a major expansion and redaction in the 2nd or 3rd century CE by either Kautilya or an anonymous author, when several books, dialogical comments, and the disharmonious chapter-division were added, and a stronger Brahmanical ideology was brought in. The text thus became a proper arthashastra, and was retitled to Kautilya's Arthashastra.

Two names for the text's compilor or redactor are used in the text, Kauṭalya (Kautilya) and Vishnugupta. Chanakya (375–283 BCE), the counsellor of Chandragupta Maurya, is implied in a later interpolation, reinforced by Gupta-era and medieval traditions, which explicitly identified Kautilya with Chanakya. This identification started during the Gupta reign (c. 240–c. 579), strengthening the Gupta's ideological presentation as heirs of the Mauryas. However, the identification has been questioned by scholarship, and rejected by the main studies on the topic since 1965, because of stylistic differences within the text which point to multiple authorship, as well as historical elements which are anachronistic for the Mauryan period, but fit in the first centuries of the Common Era. The Arthashastra was influential until the 12th century, when it disappeared. It was rediscovered in 1905 by R. Shamasastry, who published it in 1909. The first English translation, also by Shamasastry, was published in 1915.

The Sanskrit title, Arthashastra, can be translated as 'treatise on "political science"' or "economic science" or simply "statecraft", as the word artha (अर्थ) is polysemous in Sanskrit; the word has a broad scope. It includes books on the nature of government, law, civil and criminal court systems, ethics, economics, markets and trade, the methods for screening ministers, diplomacy, theories on war, nature of peace, and the duties and obligations of a king. The text incorporates Hindu philosophy, includes ancient economic and cultural details on agriculture, mineralogy, mining and metals, animal husbandry, medicine, forests and wildlife.

The Arthashastra explores issues of social welfare, the collective ethics that hold a society together, advising the king that in times and in areas devastated by famine, epidemic and such acts of nature, or by war, he should initiate public projects such as creating irrigation waterways and building forts around major strategic holdings and towns and exempt taxes on those affected. The text was influenced by Hindu texts such as the sections on kings, governance and legal procedures included in Manusmriti.

The authorship and date of writing are unknown, and there is evidence that the surviving manuscripts^[which?] are not original, and are based on texts which were modified and edited in their history, but were most likely completed in the available form between the 1st and 3rd century CE. Olivelle states that the surviving manuscripts of the Arthashastra are the product of a transmission that has involved at least three major overlapping divisions or layers, which together consist of 15 books, 150 chapters and 180 topics.

The Arthasastra is mentioned and dozens of its verses have been found on fragments of manuscript treatises buried in ancient Buddhist monasteries of northwest China, Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan. This includes the Spitzer Manuscript (c. 200 CE) discovered near Kizil in China and the birch bark scrolls now a part of the Bajaur Collection (1st to 2nd century CE) discovered in the ruins of a Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Buddhist site in 1999, state Harry Falk and Ingo Strauch.

The text was considered lost by colonial era scholars, until a manuscript was discovered in 1905. A copy of the Arthashastra in Sanskrit, written on palm leaves, was presented by a Tamil Brahmin from Thanjavur to the newly opened Mysore Oriental Library headed by Benjamin Lewis Rice. The text was identified by the librarian Rudrapatna Shamasastry as the Arthashastra. During 1905–1909, Shamasastry published English translations of the text in installments, in journals Indian Antiquary and Mysore Review.

During 1923–1924, Julius Jolly and Richard Schmidt published a new edition of the text, which was based on a Malayalam script manuscript in the Bavarian State Library. In the 1950s, fragmented sections of a north Indian version of Arthashastra were discovered in form of a Devanagari manuscript in a Jain library in Patan, Gujarat. A new edition based on this manuscript was published by Muni Jina Vijay in 1959. In 1960, R. P. Kangle published a critical edition of the text, based on all the available manuscripts. Numerous translations and interpretations of the text have been published since then.