Arthashastra of Kautilya

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Of all the secular literary sources on the history of the Mauryas, the single most important source is Arthasashtra, a treatise on polity, ascribed to Kautilya, also known as Vishnugupta and Chankya. Kautilya was the minister of Mauryan Emperor Chandragupta Maurya who overthrew the last ruler of the oppressive Nanda Dynasty of Magadh. 

Arthashastra was discovered in 1905 by R. Sama Shashtri, the Sanskrit scholar and librarian at Oriental Research Institute (ORI) in Mysore. Oriental Research Institute (ORI) in Mysore was founded by Mysore’s Wodeyar rulers in 1891. 

Arthashastra is a comprehensive source of information on statecraft and public administration. Divided into fifteen adhikaranas (sections) and 180 prukaranas (chapters), this text on polity is written in both prose and verse in Sanskrit. There is considerable debate on the exact dating of Arthasashtra. Since there is no mention of Chandragupta or Mauryan rulers of Patliputra in the work, some authorities including Winternitz, Jolly, H.C. Raychaudhuri are of the view that Arthasashtra is a later work and as such cannot be accepted as a source material for the Mauryan period. However, at the colophon of Arthasashtra, it is recorded that the book was composed by “a person who owned the land that was under the control of Nandas kings”. Historians like Radha Kumud Mukherjee, K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, Romila Thapar and Krishna Rao are of the view that it is definitely a work composed during the Mauryan period and is written by the Prime Minister or advisor to the first Mauryan Emperor Chandragupta Maurya. What appears plausible that Arthasashtra was written in the Mauryan period and subsequently elaborated in the later period.

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