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[41] The Abhidhāna-cintāmaņi-nāmamālā of Hemacandra (12th century A.D.) is a lexicon dedicated to the proper-nouns of famous
personalities. This Sanskrit work provides valuable information about
Cāņakya in the following verse -
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According to Hemacandra, these eight proper-nouns are synonyms. It means Hemacandra has mentioned seven other names of Cāņakya. He has personally chosen the name 'Cāņakya’, still in the course of narration he has used the names - ‘caņiprasū' and *caņakātmaja' for metri-causa. In the Pari-P none of the other names are employed.
In the self-commentary of the above-mentioned verse, Hemacandra provides us the etymology of each name with the concerned grammatical rules. The detailed scrutiny of each word is a vast subject of research. At this place, we will neglect the grammatical part and try to gather the additional information provided by Hemacandra.
Hemacandra has enumerated three popular names of Cāņakya in the concerned verse. Therefore, whatever the modern thinkers opine, at least for Hemacandra, it is certain that Kautilya, Cāņakya and Vişnugupta are the names of the same person.
Some Indologists like A.B.Keith mention that, 'According to Hemacandra, the kāmasūtrakāra Vātsyāyana is none other that the arthaśāstrakāra Kautilya. Actually it is not clear in the citation quoted by Hemacandra that by the name Vātsyāyana he intends to mention kāmasūtrakāra.
If we accept the etymology of dramila as 'द्रमिले देशे भवो द्रामिल:', then the birthplace of Cāņakya is modern Tamilnāda. In that case the word “golla-visaya' mentioned in the most of the Svetāmbara
