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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[JUNE, 1918
mately at the same time seems impossible on account of the extreme dissimilarity of their styles, and perhaps also by reason of their mutual differentiation as purva and uttara. If we, therefore, provisionally leave out of consideration the specific statements of the author of the Kauțilîya regarding his personality and confine our attention to the occurrence of his name in the formula iti Kaulilyah, it would be after all possible to imagine that Kautilya might not be the author of the Arthasastra that is called after him. It would then be a work of an indeterminate period of composition, and would be without that significance for the 'culture history' (Kulturgeschichte) which, I am convinced, it possesses. The great importance of this question calls for a detailed inquiry, which is to occupy us in the sequel.
When we say that a work had its origin in the school of a certain individual person after whom it is named, we must assume two things: 1. that the alleged author was the founder of a school that acknowledged him as such in the sense that he, either materially or formally, brought the development of a 'discipline' to a certain completion and, through its being regularly handed down from teacher to pupil, made & new beginning ; 2. that the discipline', that had been handed down in that manner and perhaps also amplified as regards minor details through discussion and controversy, was put forward in the form of a book by some subsequent adherent of the school. Can we make these assumptions in the case of the Kautilya ?
[834 ] That Kautilya could have been the founder of a school in the above sense is hardly conceivable in the light of what we know from history of the position of this man. For. according to the unanimous voice of tradition, which makes itself heard already in the Kautilya (yena kastram ca sastram ca Nandara jagata ca bhah | amarseno 'ddhrtány asu), he had played a leading part at the time of the founding of the Mauryan Empire and become the first Chancellor of the State that was soon to grow to such prodigious dimensions. This office imposed on him undoubtedly a task to which only a man endowed with extraordinary powers could be equal. That such a man might have "formed a school" among the statesmen and diplomats of his time--as we might say of Bismarck-may be unhesitatingly admitted ; but that he had founded an academy is difficult to believe. Just try and imagine Bismarck at the end of the day's work, if there was at all an end to it, lecturing to a number of Assessors on the theory of politics and administration ! Hardly less preposterous is it to imagine that Kautilya, the Indian Bismarck, should collect pupils around himself like a common Pandit, instruct them in the Arthasastra, and in this manner found a school of the Kauţiliyas. On the other hand, it is quite compatible with the character of a great statesman, nay even a ruler, that he should deal with the subject of his &vocation or a part of it in theoretical treatises, as indeed was actually done by Frederick the Great. Therefore, if one may speak of a school of Kautilya in any sense of the term whatever, then such a school could have originated not with Kautilya personally, but only through the medium of the Arthasastra written by him. In other words the book does not owe its existence to the school, but the school to the book. It is perhaps not superfluous to point out that the word school is used in the last sentence in two widely different senses. In the former case that is, had Kautilya himself founded the school-the word school signifies the sequence of teachers and pupils, gurusisijasamtana, in the latter the totality of the followers of his doctrines, tapmatânusâritâ.
It is true that in the first Act of the Mudrârâksasa he is represented as one. But the author of this drama, who lived a millennium after Cånakya's time, depicts the age of his hero after the pattern of his own.
