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THE FOUNDATIONS OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY remaining on one's feet, not lying down while the enemy is sitting, and not going to sleep before the rival, the one practicing the charm must have had much the look of a neurotic caught by a strange obsession. Yet, obviously, all would be well worth the trouble if the secret weapon got rid of the ring of enemies and opened to him, yo evam veda, the dominion of paramount royal rule.
This is a sample of magic arthaśāstra 81 from as terrible an age of internecine warfare as any period in Indian history: for that matter, any period in the history of the world. It was an age that ended with the mutual slaughter, the self-extermination, of the whole of Indian chivalry, terminating the older style of Aryan feudal kingship. The great blood-bath depicted in the Mahābhārata marked at once the climax and the close of the Vedic-Aryan feudal age. In the following period, which was that of the Upanişads, the Sanskrit term for “hero," vira, was no longer applied primarily to the man of action but instead to the saint-the sage who had become the master, not of others, not of the surrounding kingdoms of the world, but of himself.
Brahman
THE TERM brahman, which in the translation above is rendered "holy power" (brahmanaḥ parimaraḥ, “the dying round
81 Note that this term (cf. supra, p. 36) refers both to the literature of the science in general and to a particular volume on the subject written by Canakya Kautilya.
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