Jain Thought and Culture

Author(s): G C Pandey
Publisher: University of Rajasthan

Page 55

The Riddlc of Chanakya and Kautilya
45
The Arthasastra material which is of obviously later date is too massive to be explained by the theory of interpolations Similarly, The suggestions that the present Arthasastra is a revised version of an original work of the Maurya period or that it is a product of a school of theorists founded by Kautilya are quite untenable The treatise gives every impression of being the work of a single individual That this author was Kautilya himself has been unmistakably emphasised in the work itself Therefore if he wrote his work towards the close of the third century AD (as his posteriority to Bhasa, Asvaghosha and Vatsyayana, his reference to the Lichchhavi and Madraka republics, his mention by Dandin as a 'recent' author and other arguments discussed above suggest) it would naturally follow that the tradition contained in the last but one verse of the Arthasastra (which makes its author Vishnugupta the destroyer of the Nandas) and literature of the Gupta age (which makes Kautilya identical with Chanakya, the Prime Minister of Chandragupta Maurya) is wrong In other words Kautilya, the author of the Arthasastra, was a different individual from Chanakya, the politician of the Maurya age This theory first adumbrated by H Jacob1,34 has been worked out in detail by EJ Johnston35 and T Burrow 36 Unfortunately it has so far not attracted the attention it deserves But to us it appears to be the correct solution of the riddle of Kautilya and Chanakya The following arguments are strongly in favour of this theory
Firstly, this theory keeps Kautilya's authorship of the Artha sastra, which is clearly established by the text itself, intact, and at the same time obviates the difficulties involved in the Maurya dating of this work Further, it does not make it necessary for us to doubt the historicity of Chanakya, the Chancellor of Chandragupta Maurya so strongly emphasised in the Indian tradition
Secondly, almost in all the early versions of the story of Chanakya, only this name (not Kautilya or Vishnugupta) occurs The
34 THQ, III, pp, 669 ff He, however, believed that there was once a Prakrit poet on Niti called Chanakya whom people afterwards confused and identified with Kautilya, the author of the Arthasastra 35 JRAS. 1929, D 88 Following Romila Thapar (Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, pp 218 ff.) K C Ojha (IHQ, XXV, pp, 265 ff) wants to keep the identity of Chanakya and Kautilya and to separate Vishnugupta as a different individual This he combines with a theory of the gradual evolution of the Arthasastra from the original sutras composed by Kautilya alias Chanakya to its final redaction based on a mass of previous material by Vishnugupta which is the present work There is nothing to support such a complicated theory 36 ABORI, Golden Jubilee Number, pp 17 if