Chanakya Explored in Jaina Literature

Author(s): Nalini Joshi
Publisher: Firodaya Prakashan

Page 16

Several reasons can be enumerated why Megasthenese might not have mentioned Kautilya and his Arthaśāstra. His travel-accounts are not available in lucid, homogenius form. At many places the text is corrupt as well as concise and scattered. After all his writtings are not historical books and are based on inadequate information. Dr. Shwanbek, the editor of ‘Megasthenis Indika' specifically says that, “Though some portions of his accounts might have written on the basis of first-hand information, but many of the accounts seem to have documented by using secondary sources and are not totally acceptable on its face-value." (alfestu 372f2017, fed illa , Kaal, p.23-24)
Mahāmahopādhyāya Haraprasad Sastry was a well-known Indologist and a scholar of great repute. He wrote an extremely important book entitled 'Magadhan Literature in 1923. At that time, an enthusiastic team of Indologist was working on the Kautilya’s Arthaśāstra with full vigour. Sastry had noted down the comparison between Yuan Chwang’s India and the India reflected in the Kauțilya's Arthaśāstra. It will not be out of place to quote the full passage from Sastry's book. The passage is as follows -
Yuan Chwang came to India in 629 A.D. and remained here for sixteen years. Kautilya was a native of India, bred up and born here, and he flourished about a thousand years before Yuan Chwang. Yuan Chwang was a mere traveller, at best a devout pilgrim. But Kauțilya was a politician of prevading genius and he was the primeminister of a great empire. Yuan Chwang was interested in Buddhism only and that in its higher phases. But Kautilya was interested in everything Indian. Yuan Chwang was a religious man and looked at Indian society from the religious point of view. Kautilya