Analysis: The Duties of a King, from the Arthashastra

Date: c. 250 BCE

Geographic Region: Maurya Empire (present-day India)

Author: Kautilya

Translator: R. Shamasastry

Summary Overview

This selection is a chapter from the Arthashastra, an instructional text for the ruler of an empire, written in the third century BCE. Authorship of the Arthashastra is ascribed to Kautilya, who was the prime minister for the Indian emperor Chandragupta Maurya, ruler of the Maurya Empire. The chapter covers various aspects of effective kingship and gives advice on everything from coinage and trade to recruiting and managing spies. Because of its straightforward discussion of topics like duplicity and assassination, the Arthashastra is often compared to Niccolo Machiavelli's famous sixteenth-century political treatise, The Prince, which emphasized the effective maintenance of power over ethical behavior, but Kautilya tempered his pragmatic instructions with advice on how to be a moral ruler. Kautilya's work influenced Chandragupta, who was then able to unite India for the first time in its history.

Defining Moment

The Arthashastra was written as an advice manual for the emperor Chandragupta by his prime minister and chief advisor, Kautilya. Chandragupta rose to power during a tumultuous time in Indian history. His rule consolidated most of India under one administration, and the credit for his success is given, in part, to his able advisor.

Little is known of Chandragupta's childhood, but tradition holds that his father died just before his birth, leaving the family destitute. Some texts claim that he was from the Kshatriya, or warrior, caste, but his military training came at the behest of Kautilya, a Brahmin scholar, who may have purchased him from his family. Kautilya recognized the younger man's abilities as a military leader and groomed him to rise against the Nanda Empire of northern India, which Kautilya opposed. With Kautilya's help, Chandragupta gathered public support, hired a mercenary army, and exploited the instability caused by the earlier invasion of Alexander the Great of Macedonia, eventually conquering the Nanda Empire. Chandragupta consolidated his control over the territory of the Nanda Empire, establishing the Maurya Empire, and rapidly expanding its boundaries. When Alexander the Great died in 323 BCE, Chandragupta conquered the Punjab region, which had been held by Alexander's military officers. Chandragupta eventually expanded his empire to the Persian border, and ultimately into eastern Persia. Having secured the northern Indian subcontinent, Chandragupta looked to the south, and pushed his empire all the way to the Tamil kingdom at the southern tip of India.

Chandragupta may have conquered territory by force, but he held it with a combination of masterful diplomacy and capable administration. His empire was vast and stretched from the Himalayas to the central and southern regions of India. His administration, ably managed by Kautilya, was patterned on systems inherited from Alexander the Great, and trade and the economy thrived.

Indian tradition holds that Chandragupta was attracted to Jainism, an ascetic sect, and that he retired from his throne, handing it over to his son, and travelled to a religious site, where he fasted to death in accordance with a Jain religious tradition. Despite this end, Chandragupta left behind a thriving empire that endured for some five hundred years.

Author Biography and Document Information

Kautilya, who was also called Chanakya or Vishnugupta, was born into a family of Brahmins (the priestly or scholarly caste), but much of what is known about his life is derived from legend. It is believed that he was educated in Taxila, in present-day Pakistan, and his writing displayed an understanding of Greek and Persian texts, and he was well-versed in medicine, astrology, and military strategy. Kautilya met Chandragupta in the court of the Nanda Empire, where Chandragupta was a cow-herder, though of noble blood. Legend has it that Kautilya was so impressed with the youth that he purchased him. After being insulted in the Nanda court, Kautilya trained Chandragupta to take over the empire and remained as his faithful advisor and counselor, outlining the management of a successful empire in one of the earliest and most comprehensive treatises of political theory in the world, the Arthashastra. Kautilya is believed to have died around 270 BCE.

The Arthashastra was lost for centuries and was rediscovered when, in 1905, an unidentified scholar handed the manuscript, written on a palm-leaf, to Dr. R. Shamasastry, a Sanskrit scholar at the Mysore Oriental Library in India. Shamasastry transcribed and published a Sanskrit edition in 1909, releasing it in an English translation in 1915.

Document Analysis

This selection from the Arthashastra outlines the proper daily duties of a king. This is not so much a general philosophical passage, though there is advice on the value of being a good ruler; it reads more like a treatise on effective time management, with the king's duties laid out by the minute. The king needed to manage his time because an effective ruler would handle many items of business himself and would not keep people waiting for too long. The exhausting daily schedule allowed for just over four hours of sleep, with time allotted throughout the day for meals and some recreation, but most of the day was spent hearing public complaints, conversing with ministers, reading dispatches, and issuing rulings.

This rigorous schedule is necessary because the king should not keep supplicants waiting, and he could not appoint others to handle their cases for him. The needs of the common citizen must be met by the ruler, or the enemies of the ruler could exploit the resulting disaffection. Indeed, Kautilya is rumored to have been insulted by the Nanda ruler at a dinner party, an action which led to the downfall of the whole empire, so Kautilya did well to advise Chandragupta to court the goodwill of his people. Judgment must be made quickly by the ruler: “All urgent calls he shall hear at once, but never put off, for when postponed, they will prove too hard or impossible to accomplish.” Religious men are given particular access to the king: “he shall look to the business of those who are practicing austerities, as well as of those who are experts in witchcraft and Yoga.”

Kautilya counsels Chandragupta to keep the people's welfare in mind at all times, since their happiness is the best guarantee of regime stability. “In the happiness of his subjects lies his happiness; in their welfare his welfare; whatever pleases himself he shall not consider as good, but whatever pleases his subjects he shall consider as good.” The energy level needed to sustain the schedule that the Arthashastra lays out is critical to the success of a ruler. Activity is the single most important element in a successful empire, for “the root of wealth is activity, and of evil its reverse.”

Bibliography and Additional Reading

Mookerji, Radhakumud. Chandragupta Maurya and His Times. 4th ed. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1966. Print.

Singh, Upinder. A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century. Delhi: DK, 2008. Print.

Trautmann, Thomas R. Arthashastra: The Science of Wealth. New Delhi: Lane, 2012. Print.