Kauṭilya (Cāṇakya)

Kauṭilya, also known as Cāṇakya and Viṣṇugupta (traditionally fl. late 4th century BCE), was a Brahmin teacher, strategist and royal adviser, credited by Indian tradition with two achievements: engineering the overthrow of the Nanda dynasty of Magadha and the elevation of Candragupta Maurya as founder of the Mauryan empire (c. 321 BCE); and composing the The Arthaśāstra, the great Sanskrit treatise on statecraft. The Arthaśāstra is the most comprehensive ancient work on government in any civilisation — covering administration, economics, law, taxation, espionage, diplomacy and war in ruthless, practical detail — and has earned its author comparison with Machiavelli, Sun Tzu and Bismarck. Whether the historical minister of Candragupta wrote the text in its present form is doubtful; most scholars date its final redaction to the first centuries CE, with an older core. But “Cāṇakya” remains in India a byword for political shrewdness.

Legend

The fullest story of Cāṇakya comes from later sources — Buddhist and Jain texts, the Purāṇas, and above all Viśākhadatta’s political drama Mudrārākṣasa (“The Signet Ring of Rākṣasa”, c. 4th–8th century). Cāṇakya was a learned Brahmin, ugly, with a crooked character (kuṭila — hence perhaps Kauṭilya), who taught at the university of Takṣaśilā (Taxila). Visiting the court of the Nanda king Dhana Nanda at Pāṭaliputra, he was insulted and thrown out of a ceremony. In fury he untied his hair-tuft and vowed not to tie it until he had destroyed the Nandas. He found a boy of humble birth, Candragupta, playing at being king with other children, recognised his potential, trained him, raised an army, and after early failures — legend says he learned from a mother scolding a child who burnt his fingers by eating from the middle of a hot dish instead of the cooler edges, and so attacked the Nanda empire from its frontiers — overthrew the dynasty. In the Mudrārākṣasa, he outwits the loyal Nanda minister Rākṣasa and wins him over to serve Candragupta. Jain tradition says he ended his life by fasting; another legend that he fed Candragupta small doses of poison to make him immune.

The Arthaśāstra

The Arthaśāstra’s fifteen books, 150 chapters and some 6,000 sūtras cover the whole art of government (see The Arthaśāstra). Its central ideas:

• The goal of the state is the welfare (yogakṣema) of the people, and the king is its servant: “In the happiness of his subjects lies his happiness; in their welfare his welfare. What pleases himself he shall not consider good, but whatever pleases his subjects he shall consider good” (1.19.34).
• Without daṇḍa — coercive power, the rod of punishment — society falls into the “law of the fishes” (mātsya-nyāya), where the strong devour the weak.
• Artha — wealth and power — is the foundation of dharma and kāma: “Wealth alone is important, for dharma and pleasure depend on it.”
• The king must master four sciences: philosophy (ānvīkṣikī — Sāṃkhya, Yoga and Lokāyata), the Vedas, economics and the science of government.
• Foreign policy is analysed through the maṇḍala (circle) of states: the “would-be conqueror” is surrounded by a ring of natural enemies (his neighbours), beyond which lies a ring of natural allies (his enemies’ neighbours), and so on outward, with middle and neutral kings.
• The king has six measures of foreign policy — peace, war, waiting, marching, seeking shelter and dual policy — and four means of dealing with others: conciliation (sāma), gifts (dāna), sowing dissension (bheda) and force (daṇḍa).
• A vast espionage system — spies disguised as ascetics, merchants, students, householders and prostitutes — watches ministers, officials and foreign states; secret agents may use poison and assassination.

Cāṇakya Nīti

A separate collection of aphorisms, the Cāṇakya Nīti (or Cāṇakya Nītiśāstra), attributed to him but of much later date, is widely quoted in India: “Before you start some work, always ask yourself three questions — why am I doing it, what the results might be, and will I be successful?”; “The world’s biggest power is the youth and beauty of a woman”; “A person should not be too honest; straight trees are cut first.”

Legacy

Kauṭilya has been compared with Niccolò Machiavelli for his realism about power — though the Arthaśāstra is far more systematic, and more concerned with welfare and administration — and with Hobbes for his account of the state of nature. Max Weber thought it made Machiavelli look harmless. Modern Indian strategists invoke “Kautilyan” realism in foreign policy, and the diplomatic quarter of New Delhi is named Chanakyapuri after him.

In conversation

His principle of foreign policy is the most quoted: the neighbour is the natural enemy, the neighbour’s neighbour the natural friend. And his principle of rule, often forgotten: the king’s happiness lies in the happiness of his subjects.