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ANCIENT KOSALA AND MAGADHA
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The Arthaśāstra is not to be compared to Bismarck's memoirs, where a chancellor tells what actually happened, while trying to justify his own policy. We have no support here for the Mudrārākşasa Grey Eminence tradition, except possibly in the final colophon-probably a later insertion. The book is not meant like that of Castiglione for a gentleman-courtier's training in superficials. Machiavelli's Principe draws different conclusions (in comparably rugged prose) from the career of princes like Cesare Borgia, presumably in the hope that one such would some day arise to unite Italy. If the 14th section of the Arthaśāstra is genuine, with its extraordinarily futile magic formulae, the treatise cannot possibly be meant for the vulgar gaze. The select few who would read would necessarily be other ministers like Cāņakya, who are here made acquainted with traditional principles and theories, (not history), brought up to date and fitted to the reality as the author saw it, with considerable instruction as to the working of administrative departments. Though the principles and methods apply to states of any size, the declared purpose is aggrandizement, and the system could not long remain static, for growth or collapse are the only two effective alternatives it could admit as proved by history.
The janapada, which most of us mistake for the whole country at a first reading of the Arthaśāstra, is really the natural unit of administration. Originally, it means the territory of a tribe, with some city or group of small towns as headquarters, hence the paurajanapada of 2:1 contrasted to the new settlements. The Gangetic janapadas were widely separated by dense forests, which yielded to the highly profitable sītā cultivation of the Arthaśāstra king, as distinct from the rāştra that had been settled by tribal or private enterprise. The first kings naturally develop from the tribal chiefs of a janapada ; preservation of the janapada unit would enable local custom to be allowed for, as in A3.7, end. This would also account for the 'free cities' of the Greek observer, as the paurajanapadas, the newer settlements being ruthlessly taxed and controlled. The imperial superstructure covers, without destroying or standardization, an immense variety including the wild tribes (ātavikas) which had not yet been Aryanized ; on the other hand, though the correct definition of sītā and răstra appear in A 2. 15, the differences tended to be obscured, as seen in A 2.6, presumably by the royal power encroaching upon the prerogatives of older settlements, as well as penetration of state settlements or wilderness by individual pioneers. Nevertheless it is only an indigent king (A 2.1) who eats up the old settlers! No grasp of the Arthaśāstra is possible without understanding the fundamental difference between the few older free cities and the tremendous royal settlements peopled mostly by unprivileged sūdras.
The pragmatic note is heavily stressed throughout. Practical considerations are ever the prime ones : artha eva pradhānaḥ says Kautalya in his own
