Chānakya 

(Sanskrit: चाणक्य Cāṇakya) (c. 350–283 BCE) was an adviser and prime minister[1] to the
first Maurya Emperor Chandragupta (c. 340-293 BCE), and was the chief architect of his rise to
power. Kautilyaand Vishnugupta, the names by which the ancient Indian political treatise called
the Arthaśāstra identifies its author, are traditionally identified with Chanakya.[2] Chanakya has been
considered as the pioneer of the field of economics and political science.[3][4][5][6] In the Western world, he
has been referred to as The Indian Machiavelli, although Chanakya's works predate Machiavelli's by
about 1,800 years.[7] Chanakya was a teacher in Takṣaśila, an ancient centre of learning, and was
responsible for the creation of Mauryan empire, the first of its kind on the Indian subcontinent. His works
were lost near the end of the Gupta dynasty and not rediscovered until 1915 AD

He is generally called Chanakya (derived from his father's name "Chanak")[8] but, in his capacity as author
of the Arthaśhāstra, is generally referred to as Kautilya derived from his gotra's name "KOTIL"(Kautilya
means "of Kotil"). He was the master of shrewd act of diplomacy. He believed in four ways, namely,
Treating with Equality, Enticement, Punishment or War and Sowing Dissension.
[9]
 The Arthaśhāstra identifies its author by the name Kautilya,[2] except for one verse which refers to him
by the name Vishnugupta.[10] One of the earliest Sanskrit literatures to explicitly identify Chanakya with
Vishnugupta was Vishnu Sarma'sPanchatantra in the 3rd century BC.[11]

Kautilya's role in the formation of the Mauryan Empire is the essence of a historical/spiritual novel 

 Chanakya was born with a complete set of teeth, a sign that he would become king, which is
inappropriate for a Brahmin like Chanakya. Chāṇakya's teeth were therefore broken and it was
prophesied that he will rule through another.
 The Nanda King throws Chānakya out of his court, prompting Chānakya to swear revenge.
 Chānakya searches for one worthy for him to rule through. Chānakya encounters a
young Chandragupta Maurya who is a born leader even as a child.
 Chānakya's initial attempt to overthrow Nanda fails, whereupon he comes across a mother
scolding her child for burning himself by eating from the middle of a bun or bowl of porridge rather
than the cooler edge. Chāṇakya realizes his initial strategic error and, instead of attacking the heart of
Nanda territory, slowly chips away at its edges.
 Chānakya changed his alliance with the mountain king Parvata due to his obstinacy and non-
adherence to the principles of the treaty as agreed.
 Chānakya enlists the services of a fanatical weaver to rid the kingdom of rebels.
 Chānakya's political rivalry with Subandhu leads to his death.

Chanakya was an astute brahmin and shrewd observer of nature. Once, it is said that Mauryan forces
had to hide in a cave. There was no food, and the soldiers were starving.They could not come out of the
cave either, as there was a threat to their lives. Chanakya saw an ant taking a grain of rice, whereas,
there was no sign of food or grain anywhere. Moreover, the rice grain was cooked. He ordered the
soldiers to search and they found that their enemies had been dining under the cave. Indeed, they were
eating at the ground floor. As soon as they saw this, they escaped and were thus saved.

Chanakya served as the chief administrator of Chandragupta Maurya, he started adding small amounts
of poison in Chandragupta's food so that he would get used to it. The aim of this was to prevent the
Emperor from being poisoned by enemies. One day the queen, Durdha, shared the food with the Emperor
while she was pregnant. Since she was not used to eating poisoned food, she died. Chanakya decided
that the baby should not die; hence he cut open the belly of the queen and took out the baby. A drop
(bindu in Sanskrit) of poison had passed to the baby's head, and hence Chanakya named him Bindusara.
Bindusara would go on to become a great king and to father the greatest Mauryan Emperor since
Chandragupta - Asoka.

When Bindusara became a youth, Chandragupta gave up the throne and followed
the Jain saint Bhadrabahu to present day Karnataka and settled in a place known as Shravana Belagola.
He lived as an ascetic for some years and died of voluntary starvation according to Jain tradition.

Chanakya meanwhile stayed as the administrator of Bindusara. Bindusara also had a minister named
Subandhu who did not like Chanakya. One day he told Bindusara that Chanakya was responsible for the
murder of his mother. Bindusara asked the nurses who confirmed this story and he became very angry
with Chanakya.

It is said that Chanakya, on hearing that the Emperor was angry with him, thought that anyway he was at
the end of his life. He donated all his wealth to the poor, widows and orphans and sat on a dung heap,
prepared to die by total abstinence from food and drink. Bindusara meanwhile heard the full story of his
birth from the nurses and rushed to beg forgiveness of Chanakya. But Chanakya would not change his
mind. Bindusara went back and vented his fury on Subandhu, and killed him.

Chanakya after this incident, renounced food and shortly died thereafter. Bindusara revered Chanakya
and the loss of his advisor was a considerable blow to him.

Works

Two books are attributed to Chanakya: Arthashastra and Neetishastra which is also known as

Chanakya Niti. The Arthashastra discusses monetary and fiscal policies, welfare, international relations,
and war strategies in detail. Neetishastra is a treatise on the ideal way of life, and shows Chanakya's in-
depth study of the Indian way of life. Chanakya also developed Neeti-Sutras (aphorisms - pithy
sentences) that tell people how they should behave. Of these well-known 455 sutras, about 216 refer to
raaja-neeti (the do's and don'ts of running a kingdom). Apparently, Chanakya used these sutras to groom
Chandragupta and other selected disciples in the art of ruling a kingdom.

The arthashastra:

The Arthashastra (IAST: Arthaśāstra) is an ancient Indian Hindu treatise on statecraft, economic policy

and military strategy which identifies its author by the names Kautilya[1] and Viṣhṇugupta,[2] who are
traditionally identified with Chāṇakya (c. 350–283 BC),[3] who was a scholar at Takshashila and later the
prime minister of the Maurya Empire.

The original identification of Kautilya or Vishnugupta with the Mauryan minister Chānakya would date

the Arthaśāstra to the 4th century BCE.[4] However, certain affinities with smrtis and references that would
be anachronistic for the 4th century BC suggest assigning the Arthaśāstra to the 2nd through 4th
centuries CE.[5] Thomas R. Trautmann and I.W. Mabbett concur that the Arthaśāstra is a composition
from no earlier than the 2nd century AD, but based on earlier material.[6] K.C. Ojha puts forward the view
that the traditional identification of Vishnugupta with Kautilya was caused by a confusion of editor and
originator and suggests that Vishnugupta is in fact a redactor of the original work of Kautilya.[4] Thomas
Burrow goes even further and says that Chānakya and Kautilya are actually two different people.[7] The end
of this treatise Arthaśāstra, however, says: "This Sástra has been made by him who from intolerance (of
misrule) quickly rescued the scriptures and the science of weapons and the earth which had passed to
the Nanda king." More recently, Mital[8] concluded that the methods used by Trautmann were inadequate
to prove his claims, and therefore "there exists no direct evidence against Kautilya being the sole author
of The Arthashastra, nor evidence that it was not written during the 4th century BCE."[9]

Centrally, Arthaśāstra argues for an autocracy managing an efficient and solid economy. It discusses

the ethics of economics and the duties and obligations of a king.[14] The scope of Arthaśāstra is, however,
far wider than statecraft, and it offers an outline of the entire legal and bureaucratic framework for
administering a kingdom, with a wealth of descriptive cultural detail on topics such as mineralogy, mining
and metals, agriculture, animal husbandry, medicine and the use of wildlife.[15] The Arthaśāstra also
focuses on issues of welfare (for instance, redistribution of wealth during a famine) and the collective
ethics that hold a society together.

Books of Arthashastra

Arthashastra is divided into 15 books:

 I Concerning Discipline
 II The Duties of Government Superintendents
 III Concerning Law
 IV The Removal of Thorns
 V The Conduct of Courtiers
 VI The Source of Sovereign States
 VII The End of the Six-Fold Policy
 VIII Concerning Vices and Calamities
 IX The Work of an Invader
 X Relating to War
 XI The Conduct of Corporations
 XII Concerning a Powerful Enemy
 XIII Strategic Means to Capture a Fortress
 XIV Secret Means
 XV The Plan of a Treatise

Points of the arthashastra:

Duties of the king

Internal strife
Comments on vices
Training of a future king
The training of a prince
Seven ways to greet a neighbour
Maintenance of law and order
Wildlife and forests
Economic ideas

Books of Arthashastra

Arthashastra is divided into 15 books:

 I Concerning Discipline
 II The Duties of Government Superintendents
 III Concerning Law
 IV The Removal of Thorns
 V The Conduct of Courtiers
 VI The Source of Sovereign States
 VII The End of the Six-Fold Policy
 VIII Concerning Vices and Calamities
 IX The Work of an Invader
 X Relating to War
 XI The Conduct of Corporations
 XII Concerning a Powerful Enemy
 XIII Strategic Means to Capture a Fortress
 XIV Secret Means
 XV The Plan of a Treatise

Kautilya: The Arthashastra

(4th Century BCE)

This treatise on government is said to have been written by the prime minister of India's first great emperor,
Chandragupta Maurya. Although often compared to Machiavelli's Prince  because of its sometimes ruthless
approach to practical politics, Kautilya's work is far more varied--and entertaining--than usual accounts of it
indicate. He mixes the harsh pragmatism for which he is famed with compassion for the poor, for slaves, and for
women. He reveals the imagination of a romancer in imagining all manner of scenarios which can hardly have been
commonplace in real life.

The Institution of Spies

One of the most notorious features of the Arthashastra is its obsession with spying on the king's subjects. Kautilya
sometimes goes to amusingly absurd lengths to imagine various sorts of spies. He even cynically proposes using
fake holy men for this purpose.

A man with shaved head or braided hair and desirous to earn livelihood is a spy under the guise of an ascetic
practicing austerities. Such a spy surrounded by a host of disciples with shaved head or braided hair may take his
abode in the suburbs of a city, and pretend as a person barely living on a handful of vegetables or meadow grass
taken once in the interval of a month or two, but he may take in secret his favorite foodstuffs.

Merchant spies pretending to be his disciples may worship him as one possessed of preternatural powers. His other
disciples may widely proclaim that "This ascetic is an accomplished expert of preternatural powers."
Regarding those persons who, desirous of knowing their future, throng to him, he may, through palmistry, foretell
such future events as he can ascertain by the nods and signs of his disciples concerning the works of high-born
people of the country--viz. small profits, destruction by fire, fear from robbers, the execution of the seditious,
rewards for the good, forecast of foreign affairs, saying, "This will happen to-day, that to-morrow, and that this
king will do." Such assertions of the ascetic his disciples shall corroborate (by adducing facts and figures). (1)

He shall also foretell not only the rewards which persons possessed of foresight, eloquence, and bravery are likely
to receive at the hands of the king, but also probable changes in the appointments of ministers.

The king's minister shall direct his affairs in conformity to the forecast made by the ascetic. He shall appease with
offer of wealth and those who have had some well-known cause to be disaffected, and impose punishments in secret
on those who are for no reason disaffected or who are plotting against the king.

Formation of Villages

Far from being single-mindedly aimed at preserving the monarch's power for its own sake, like Machiavelli's The
Prince, the Arthasastra requires the ruler to benefit and protect his citizens, including the peasants, whom Kautilya
correctly believes to the ultimate source of the prosperity of the kingdom. He therefore advocates what is now called
"land reform."

What practical argument does Kautilya offer the king for supporting poor farmers?

Lands may be confiscated from those who do not cultivate them and given to others; or they may be cultivated by
village laborers and traders , lest those owners who do not properly cultivate them might pay less (to the
government). If cultivators pay their taxes easily, they may be favorably supplied with grains, cattle, and money.

The king shall bestow on cultivators only such favor and remission as will tend to swell the treasury, and shall avoid
such as deplete it. . . .

The king shall provide the orphans, the aged, the infirm, the afflicted, and the helpless with maintenance. He shall
also provide subsistence to helpless women when they are carrying and also to the children they give birth to.

Elders among the villagers shall improve the property of bereaved minors till the latter attain their age; so also the
property of gods.

When a capable person other than an apostate or mother neglects to maintain his or her child, wife, mother, father,
minor brothers, sisters, or widowed girls, he or she shall be punished with a fine of twelve panas.

When, without making provision for the maintenance of his wife and sons, any person embraces asceticism, he shall
be punished with the first amercement; (2) likewise any person who converts a woman to asceticism.

Whoever has passed the age of copulation may become an ascetic after distributing the properties of his own
acquisition (among his sons), otherwise he will be punished.

Rules Regarding Slaves and Laborers

Slaves were not as common in ancient India as in other civilizations, partly because the lower castes were forced to
take on voluntarily many unsavory tasks that would have been performed by slaves elsewhere. However, they did
exist, and Kautilya's regulations governing them are among the most liberal in history. Note how upper-caste slaves
are protected from demeaning labor that was reserved for the lowest castes, and how the chastity of female slaves is
protected (even ancient Judaism and Islam explicitly allowed a master to have sex with his slave women). It is
unknown how widely observed these idealistic regulations were.

Compare these laws on slavery with those in Hammurabi's Code and the Hebrew Bible. In what ways did caste
affect the way slaves were to be treated?

Deceiving a slave of his money or depriving him of the privileges he can exercise as an  Arya, (3) shall be punished
with half the fine (levied for enslaving the life of an Arya).

A man who takes in mortgage a person who runs away, or who dies or who is incapacitated by disease, shall be
entitled to receive back [from the mortgagor] the value he paid for the slave.

Employing a slave to carry the dead or to sweep ordure, urine, or the leavings of food; (4) or a female slave to
attend on her master while he is bathing naked; or hurting or abusing him or her, or violating (the chastity of) a
female slave shall cause the forfeiture of the value paid for him or her. Violation [of the chastity] of nurses, female
cooks, or female servants of the class of joint cultivators or of any other description shall at once earn their liberty
for them. Violence towards an attendant of high birth shall entitle him to run away. When a master has connection
with a nurse or pledged female slave under his power against her will, he shall be punished with the first
amercement; for doing the same when she is under the power of another, he shall be punished with the middlemost
amercement. (5) When a man commits or helps another to commit rape with a girl or a female slave pledged to him,
he shall not only forfeit the purchase-value, but also pay a certain amount of money [sulka] to her and a fine of
twice the amount [of sulka to the government].

Capture of the Enemy by Means of Secret Contrivances

Unlike most political treatises, the Arthasastra makes highly entertaining reading, partly because of the mini-
narratives in which Kautilya describes how a king may retain his power or preserve his life after he has been
overthrown.

Contrivances to kill the enemy may be formed in those places of worship and visit, which the enemy, under the
influence of faith, frequents on occasions of worshipping gods and of pilgrimage.

A wall or stone, kept by mechanical contrivance, may, by loosening the fastenings, be let to fall on the head of the
enemy when he has entered into a temple; stones and weapons may be showered over his head from the topmost
story; or a door-panel may be let to fall; or a huge rod kept over a wall or partly attached to a wall may be made to
fall over him; or weapons kept inside the body of an idol may be thrown over his head; or the floor of those places
where he usually stands, sits, or walks may be besprinkled with poison mixed with cowdung1 or with pure water; or,
under the plea of giving him flowers, scented powders, or of causing scented smoke, he may be poisoned; or by
removing the fastenings made under a cot or a seat, he may be made to fall into a pit containing pointed spears. . . .

Or having challenged the conqueror at night, he may successfully confront the attack; if he cannot do this, he may
run away by a side path; or, disguised as a heretic, he may escape with a small retinue; or he may be carried off by
spies as a corpse; or disguised as a woman, he may follow a corpse [as it were, of her husband to the cremation
ground]; or on the occasion of feeding the people in honor of gods or of ancestors or in some festival, he may make
use of poisoned rice and water, and having conspired with his enemy's traitors, he may strike the enemy with his
concealed army; or, when he is surrounded in his fort, he may lie concealed in a hole bored into the body of an idol
after eating sacramental food and setting up an altar; or he may lie in a secret hole in a wall, or in a hole made in
the body of an idol in an underground chamber; and when he is forgotten, he may get out of his concealment
through a tunnel, and, entering into the palace, slay his enemy while sleeping, or loosening the fastening of a
machine he may let it fall on his enemy; or when his enemy is lying in a chamber which is besmeared with
poisonous and explosive substances, or which is made of lac, he may set fire to it. Fiery spies, hidden in an
underground chamber, or in a tunnel, or inside a secret wall, may slay the enemy when the latter is carelessly
amusing himself in a pleasure park or any other place of recreation; or spies under concealment may poison him;
or women under concealment may throw a snake, or poison, or fire or poisonous smoke over his person when he is
asleep in a confined place; or spies, having access to the enemy's harem, may, when opportunities occur, do to the
enemy whatever is found possible on the occasion, and then get out unknown.