Journal of Military Ethics (2004) 3(1): 40
/52

Editor’s note: This special column of the Journal of Military Ethics highlights important
historical contributions to the ethics of war, peacemaking and military affairs. In this issue
senior research fellow at the Institute of Culture Studies, University of Oslo, Torkel Brekke,
describes the contributions of the Indian thinker Kautilya to Asian statecraft and military
thought.

BENCHMARKS

Wielding the Rod of

Punishment War and Violence
in the Political Science of

/

Kautilya
Torkel Brekke
Institute of Culture Studies, University of Oslo, Box 1010 Blindern, NO-0315 Oslo, Norway.
Tel: /47 22 85 78 37, Fax: /47 22 85 48 28, E-mail: torkel.brekke@iks.uio.no

This article presents Kautilya, the most important thinker in the tradition
of statecraft in India. Kautilya has influenced ideas of war and violence in
much of South- and Southeast Asia and he is of great importance for a
comparative understanding of the ethics of war. The violence inflicted by
the king on internal and external enemies is pivotal for the maintenance
of an ordered society, according to Kautilya. Prudence and treason are
hallmarks of Kautilya’s world. The article shows that this realist and
cynical view of politics is very different from other traditions in India,
especially the religious tradition of the epic literature, where war is a
game and chivalry is paramount. I conclude that Kautilya’s tradition has
something in common with the Clausewitzean philosophy of war.
KEYWORDS: India, Kautilya, comparative ethics, war, statecraft.

When studying ancient non-Western thinkers on war, we may recall Hans

Morgenthau’s words about the relevance of our subject:

Human nature, in which the laws of politics have their roots, has not changed
since the classical philosophies of China, India, and Greece endeavored to

ª 2004 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/150275704100005210

 Kautilya 41

discover these laws. Hence, novelty is not necessarily a virtue in political

theory, nor is old age a defect. (Morgenthau 1973: 4)1

Friederich Max Müller, the great scholar of comparative philology and mythology,
wrote in 1859 that India had no place in the political history of the world (Müller
[1859] 1993: 31). When Kautilya’s Arthashastra , an ancient Indian treatise on
statecraft, was discovered in 1905 and published in 1914, Western Indology had
for a long time treated Indian history of ideas purely as a tradition of more or less
speculative religious philosophy and mysticism. Kautilya’s work demonstrated that
ancient India had a substantial tradition of statecraft. In a global comparative
perspective, Kautilya and his followers clearly rank among the truly great traditions
of statecraft and military thought and it has continued to influence politics
throughout South- and Southeast Asia down to modern times.
Kautilya’s treatise is entitled Arthashastra. Arthashastra is not really a name
but a generic term. It is made up of two smaller words: artha and shastra . Artha
means ‘worldly gains’ in a broad sense, but to simplify a bit we may translate it by
‘wealth’. Shastra means ‘science’. A simple but reasonably exact translation of
Arthashastra would therefore be Science of Worldly Gains . In the last chapter of this
work, Kautilya gives his own definition of this science:

Artha is the source of the livelihood of human beings, in other words, the earth
inhabited by men. The science which is the means of the attainment and
protection of that earth is the arthashastra (KA 15.1.1
/2)2.

Arthashastra is the science which is the means of the attainment and protection of
earthly goods and wealth. In classical Indian literature, the goals of life were often
divided in three: religion or the cosmic order (dharma ), worldly gain (artha ), and
enjoyment (kama ). Thus, on this understanding, worldly gain and its science was
only one of three possible goals of human life. Kautilya did, however, believe that it
was the most important of the three goals. On this score, other writers would
disagree with him. Some of these even add a fourth goal, salvation, or more exactly
liberation from the cycle of rebirth (moksha ). The literatures dealing with liberation

1
There has recently appeared a book on the comparative ethics of war: Just War in Comparative
Perspective, Paul Robinson, ed., 2003. In this book there is a chapter about Hinduism by Francis X.
Clooney entitled ‘Pain But Not Harm: Some Classical Resources Toward a Hindu Just War Theory’.
Unfortunately, I have not been able to get hold of this book before the deadline for this article. I may also
mention that I have recently edited a book on the ethics of war in ancient Asian civilizations which is
being published by RoutledgeCurzon press. The book contains a wider discussion of Hindu ethics on war
and warfare as well as chapters on other Asian civilizations.
2
KA 15.1.1-2. I will refer to Kautilya’s Arthashastra as KA from now on. Here I use the translation in:
Kautilya’s Arthashastra , Translated by R. Shamasastry. With an introductory note by J.F. Fleet. 1923,
Mysore: The Wesleyan Mission Press. When I refer to Shamashastry in footnotes, I mean the
translation, not the edited text. There is a newer English translation with critical and explanatory notes
by R.P. Kangle. On the matter of the Sanskrit text editions, there is a choice between the edition by R.
Shamasastry, one by J. Jolly and R. Schmidt and one by R.P. Kangle. The Sanskrit edition is not really
relevant in this context but I generally use R.P. Kangle ed., The Kautiliya Arthashastra , 1960. Bombay:
University of Bombay Studies.
42 Torkel Brekke

or salvation and enjoyment have nothing to do with our subject here, whereas the
literature on dharma is important to understand both Kautilya and other political
writers of South Asia. I will return to this.
Who was Kautilya? First of all, he was the author of what is by far the most
important work on statecraft in Indian history.3 According to an important
tradition, he was the adviser and mentor of King Chandragupta Maurya, who ruled
a great Indian empire from the end of the third century B.C. Immediately after the
publication of the Sanskrit text of Kautilya’s Arthashastra, some European and
American scholars questioned the authenticity of the treatise and even the
historicity of the author. In general, the scholars who deny the authenticity of
Kautilya’s Arthashastra tend to place it in the third or fourth century AD, mostly
from rather inconclusive internal arguments from the subject matter (Winternitz
1985: 633). This is not the place to discuss the scholarly arguments about the
identity of the author of the Arthashastra . Despite some doubts to the contrary, there
is good reason to believe that the work was composed in the late fourth or early
third century B.C. The treatise itself draws on a rather advanced tradition of
statecraft (ibid.: 630). This leads us to the important question of the context of
Kautilya’s political science.

Kautilya’s Political and Philosophical Context

In the middle of the fourth century B.C. a king named Mahapadma Nanda
subjugated most of northern India and established the short-lived Nanda dynasty.
According to Greek and Roman sources, the Nandas had a large army with
infantry, horsemen, elephants and chariots and they ruled their vast Indian empire
from the capital of Pataliputra, today’s Patna. Alexander the Great crossed the
Hindukush mountains in Afghanistan in 327. He continued down the Kabul valley
and reached the great river Indus, which he crossed with his army in the spring of
326. Although Alexander fought a number of battles in Afghanistan and left
garrisons behind when he started on his return, he left no impression on India and
is not mentioned in any Indian sources. However, Greek sources speak of a certain
Sandracottus, who helped Alexander in his battles against the Indian king
Mahpadma Nanda.
Sandracottus’ Indian name was Chandragupta and he was the new king
residing in Pataliputra after he had usurped the throne around 320 B.C. According
to the Indian tradition, Chandragupta’s rise to power was almost exclusively the
result of the political cunning of his adviser, Kautilya. According to tradition, then,
Kautilya was the intelligent and unscrupulous adviser of the first great Indian
emperor, Chandragupta Maurya and he was the architect of the greatest of the

3
We should perhaps mention here that questions of violence and legitimation in ancient India could be
approached in any number of different ways from the classical Indological discussion of the Vedic
sacrifice to the almost absurd non-violence of certain religious sects and to the exotic doctrines of the
groups that sought to liberate people from the cycle of rebirth by killing them, the samsaramocakas . Our
focus here is on political science exculsively.
 Kautilya 43

ancient Indian empires, ruled by the Maurya dynasty. Later Indian plays depict
Kautilya as the actual ruler of India at the time, Chandragupta being a weak, young
king. At the end of his treatise Kautilya describes himself as the man who destroyed
the Nanda dynasty:

This manual [i.e. the Arthashastra ] is written by him who in his anger
impatiently raised up science and weapons and the earth from under the
control of the Nanda kings.4

In short, the political situation at the time of Kautilya and at the time of the
composing of the Arthashastra was initially rather unstable but the reign of
Chandragupta marked the beginnings of a long period of peace and prosperity.
Pataliputra was a capital about twice the size of Rome under Marcus Aurelius and
the king himself resided in a splendid wooden palace. It was a period of rapid
political and economic development (Thapar 1961: 1984). In this world, Kautilya’s
one concern was how to make the kingdom and the king as strong and prosperous
as possible. Still, on the relationship between goals and means in the thought of
Kautilya there has been some debate. For instance, what is the relationship between
the two traditional goals of worldly gain (artha) and religion and universal laws and
duties (dharma ) in Kautilya’s work? To answer this, we need to give a brief definition
of dharma , the key concept of Indian social philosophy. Dharma refers both to the
natural order of the cosmos and the individual’s duties and privileges according to
this order. There are three factors determining the social position of an individual.
Firstly, there is the affiliation of class (varna ) and caste; secondly, there is one’s
position in terms of age; finally, there is gender. I will translate dharma by religion
but it is important to realize that it actually means much more and especially refers
to social position in relation to the cosmic order. The Dutch Indologist J.C.
Heesterman has given important contributions to the understanding of ancient
Indian political thought.5 Heesterman asserts that even Kautilya’s notorious work
on the Arthashastra does not break with the literature on dharma
/ the
dharmashastra
/ in order to formulate an independent raison d’etat (Heesterman:
111). Dharma always keeps hovering over artha and the political science in India,
according to Heesterman. I find it difficult to agree with Heesterman on this point.
Clearly, there was a complex relationship between the literature on politics and
the literature on religion and cosmic order in classical India (Jolly 1913: 49
/69).
The interaction between the dharma -tradition and the artha-tradition, between
religion and politics to put it crudely, was not one-way. If the dharmashastra
influenced Kautilya, it is also the case that Kautilya’s Arthashastra in its turn
influenced the literature on dharma . For instance, there are tensions within the most
important book about dharma written by Manu because it endeavours to

4
Here there is a pun on the words science and weapon . In Sanskrit, science is shastra with a long a and
weapon is shastra with a short a .
5
Some of his essays have been collected in Heesterman 1985.
44 Torkel Brekke

incorporate classical political concepts and ideas into a religious framework. The
commentators on Manu borrowed extensively from Kautilya, too.6
More importantly, I believe we must see Kautilya as more independent of the
dharma -tradition from the way he treats questions of politics. Kautilya saw the life of
the king as a constant struggle to maintain order in the kingdom and gain economic
and political advantages vis-à-vis his immediate neighbors. When the occasion was
ripe, the king should expand his territory and fill his treasury through war. The
situation within the kingdom was analysed in terms of economy, revenue and
control through gathering of intelligence. The kings should have an extensive
system of spies and informers and he should kill anybody who might threaten him,
especially untrustworthy ministers and servants.
The relationship between kingdoms was analysed as an anarchic system,
where the king must see himself in the middle of a circle of states (mandala ) and a
circle of kings (rajamandala ), where the immediate neighbors are natural enemies
(ari ) and the neighbor’s neighbor is a natural friend (mitra ) because he is the enemy
of the enemy.

The king who is situated anywhere immediately on the circumference of the

concqueror’s territory is termed the enemy. The king who is likewise situated
close to the enemy, but separated from the conqueror only by the enemy, is
termed the friend (of the conqueror). [...] Throwing the circumference of the
Circle of States beyond his friend’s territory, and making the kings of those
states as the spokes of that circle, the concqueror shall make himself as the
nave of that circle (KA 6.2. Shamashastry 312
/313).

This pattern of friends and enemies repeats itself in concentric circles and the king
must always strive to dominate. Kautilya goes on and on giving details about the
relationhsip between different elements of the circles according to their relative
strength. To our concern it suffices to know that the king is basically a conqueror in
a system of alliances. In Kautilya’s world, the end of strength and prosperity justfies
any means. What, then, about ethics?
The great tradition of ethics that Kautilya first of all had to relate to as a
thinker was that handed down by the Brahmins, i.e. the representatives of the
priestly class. Their ethic may be called deontological because it emphasized the
duties of the individual according to dharma . On the other hand there was the early
form of the Arthashastra, which may be called consequentialist in the sense that it is
a pragmatic system of thought which seeks to maximise wealth. In one of the
biographical accounts of the Buddha, we are told that the young prince was taught
the Arthashastra and we have other textual sources indicating that this tradition
was part of the education of princes.7

6
In the case of the important commentator Medhatithi, however, the borrowing was not direct from
Kautilya’s work but from the earlier commentator Bharuci. Bharuci often borrowed long passages from
Kautilya without much adjustment. Medhatithi probably lived somewhere between 825 and 900 AD
and Bharuci somewhere between 700 and 850 AD. See Derrett and Duncan 1965: 134
/152. See also
Jolly 1913: 49
/69.
7
For example, the Lalitavistara . See Winternitz, vol. 3: 608
/9.
 Kautilya 45

Kautilya’s Ideas About violence and Military Means

The literature on artha sees the king first of all as responsible for the maintenance of
the correct order of society and in exchange for his services he collects taxes.8 In
Indian tradition the central characteristic of an ordered world is the clear
segmentation of the varnas , classes, and the ashramas, stages of life, and people’s
observation of their duty according to these two factors.9 The opposite of an ordered
world is the state of chaos where the stronger grill the weaker as fish on a spit,
where the crow eats the sacrificial cake and the dog licks the oblation, where there
is no ownership and everything is upside down, according to Manu. In order to
maintain order and to protect his people the king has danda , the rod of punishment.
Danda is military power and danda is punishment. The execution of power is the
‘wielding of danda ’ (dandaniti ). To see how important violence is to Kautilya we may
look at the opening parts of his treatise, where he sets out some views about his
subject. In chapter 4 of Book 1 of the Arthashastra Kautilya lays out the goals of
political science and he gives the rod a prominent place in the maintenance of an
orderly world:

Danda is the means to secure the logical inquiry (anviksiki),10 the three Vedas
and economics. Its wielding is the science of politics (dandaniti) the purpose of
which is the acquisition of what is not acquired, the preservation of what is
acquired, the augmentation of what is preserved and the giving away of what
is augmented to a worthy recipient. The orderly maintenance of worldly life
depends on it [danda]. Therefore the king seeking the orderly maintenance of
worldly life should always hold the stick lifted up to strike. For there is no such
thing for the subjugation of beings, say the teachers.11

In Indian ideology the rod that is the symbol of the king’s physical power often
becomes a symbol of the king himself. I mentioned that the relationship between the
literature on politics (artha ) and the literature on religion (dharma ) is complex and
ambiguous. The writers on dharma , too, are very concerned with the question of
legitimate violence. The most important writer on dharma , Manu, puts it this way:

For (the king’s) sake the Lord in ancient times emitted the Rod of Punishment,
his own son, (the incarnation of) Justice, to be the protector of all living beings,
made of the brilliant energy of ultimate reality. [...] The Rod is the King and the
man, he is the inflicter and he is the chastiser, traditionally regarded as the
guarantor for the duty of the four stages of life. The Rod alone chastises all
subjects, the Rod protects them, the Rod stays awake while they sleep; wise
men know that justice is the Rod. Properly wielded, with due consideration, it

8
For more details on the relationship between the king, the land and questions of revenue, see for
instance Scharfe 1993: 240
/251.
9
In the Bhagavadgita the observance of varnashramadharma without thoughts of the fruits of one’s action
is a soteriological technique.
10
There is an argument to be made for translating anvikshiki with philosophy .
11
This four-fold ideal concerning wealth and its distribution is found several times in Indian literature.
46 Torkel Brekke

makes all the subjects happy; but inflicted without due consideration, it
destroys everything. [...] Where the Rod moves about, black and with red eyes,
destroying evil, there the subjects do not get confused, as long as the inflicter
sees well (The Laws of Manu , Verses 7.14, 17
/19 and 25).

The most important difference between the passage from Kautilya and Manu about
violence and the wielding of the rod may be the fact that the more religiously
oriented of the two, i.e. Manu, blends all kinds of mythological ideas about the
origins of kingship into his view of violence.
At first glance, it might seem that the wielding of the rod is simply one branch
of the arthashastra , i.e. that the science of violence is a branch of the science of
wordly gain. This seems reasonable when one considers how the Arthashastra of
Kautilya discusses violence alongside other tools available to the king, like economic
policy and organization of the bureaucracy. But the fact is that many writers have
seen the wielding of the rod as synonym with arthashastra implying that Kautilya is
really discussing subjects that are outside his proper field when he discusses peaceful
things like inheritance, debts, transactions, or the offices of the controller of
shipping, director of forests or superintendent of elephants. This also entails that
violence is the means par excellence in the tool-kit of the ruler
/ the Raja
/
according to Kautilya; the king is first and foremost a protector of order and an
inflicter of punishment.
What is the relationship between the legitimate violence inflicted by the king
on his subjects to maintain order and the violence inflicted against other kings and
their societies? I believe that one of the main differences between Europe and India
on matters of ethics and violence is the fact that Europe developed a sharper
distinction between internal and external violence than India did. Perhaps it is
simply about the distinction between duellum and bellum that appeared in the
Middle Ages. This is not the place to speculate further on this, although I must say
that I am inclined to think that one of the main variables between societies on
matters of violence and ethics
/ China and Japan may be even more relevant than
India here
/ is precisely the degree to which they distinguish between policing and
war.
The wielding of the rod of punishment in internal affairs, is described as
potentially extremely brutal and ruthless by Kautilya. For instance, in book 5
Kautilya has advice on how to get rid of dangerous elements without getting
enmeshed in matters of law and justice:

The king in the interest of rightousness may inflict punishment in secret on

those courtiers or confederacy of chiefs who are dangerous to the safety of the
kingdom and who cannot be put down in open daylight (KA 5.1 Shamasastry
287).

Getting rid of ministers mostly involves clever traps and poisoned food. For instance,
the king may invite a minister for an interview and send some of his agents to
accompany the minister on his way to the palace. The agents should carry
concealed weapons and when they are discovered by the palace guards, the agents
should quickly admit to be involved in a plot led by the minister, who should be put
to death on the spot (KA 5.1). A simpler method:
 Kautilya 47

A spy, under the guise of a physician, may make a seditious minister believe
that he is suffering from a fatal or incurable disease and contrive to poison him
while prescribing medicine and diet to him (KA 5.1 Shamashastry 289).

To Kautilya, war is often discussed as an extension of internal violence and

punishment. War is never an end in itself. War is always a dangerous undertaking
and the king should only use military means when he knows he can achieve
something substantial by it. This separates Kautilya from much of the literature on
war in classical India. For instance, in the world of chivalry which is reflected in
many sections of the Mahabharata , warfare is viewed as a kind of religious game
where the most important thing is not winning but fighting well according to the
laws of dharma . In this world of bravery, running away from the battlefield is
shameful. Kautilya is very much opposed to this idea of war. Chivalry has no place
in his intrumental conception of military action.

When a king of poor resources is attacked by a powerful enemy, he should

surrender himself together with his sons to the enemy and live like a reed (in
the water). Bharadvaja says that he who surrenders himself to the strong,
bows down before Indra. But Vishalaksha says that a weak king should rather
fight with all his resources, for bravery destroys all troubles, this fighting is the
natural duty of the warrior (Kshatriya), no matter whether he achieves victory
or sustains defeat in battle. No, says Kautilya, he who bows down to all like a
crab on the bank of the river lives in despair; whoever goes with his small
army to fight perishes like a man attempting to cross the sea without a boat.
Hence a weak king should either seek the protection of a powerful king or
maintain himself in an impregnable fort (KA 12.1).

In this passage, Kautilya refers to two legendary writers with very different and
opposing opinions of the very metaphysical basis of political science. Bharadvaja
represents the realist tradition, where the weak must bow down and forge alliances
with the stronger, whereas Vishalaksha represents the dharma tradition, in which
religious duties are more important than the outcome of the battle. To use Western
terminology, we see the tension between deontology and consequentialism in
Indian ideology of war. Kautilya clearly positions himself in the consequentialist
camp. He rejects the idea that one should fight to the end only because fighting is a
natural duty and bravery has intrinsic value. Bravery has value for Kautilya only to
the extent that it makes the warriors better fit to win a battle. In order to prepare his
soldiers, the king should make any argument he can. For instance, he should have
his priests encourage the army by promising salvation and paradise after a glorious
death. From this perspective, even religious tradition and doctrines take on an
instrumental value.

His ministers and priest should encourage the army by saying thus: ‘It is
declared in the Vedas that the goal which is reached by sacrificers, after
performing the final ablutions, in sacrifices in which the priests have been duly
paid for, is the very goal which brave men are destined to attain’ (KA 10.3
Shamashastry 426).
48 Torkel Brekke

In other words, he should tell his men that dying on the battlefield is a shortcut to
heavenly bliss. He continues later ‘Soothsayers and court bards should describe
heaven as the goal for the brave and hell for the timid’ (KA 10.3 Shamashastry
426). Kautilya does not care whether what the priests, astrologers, magician and
soothsayers are saying is true. His science is about winning wars here on earth. The
king must promise rich rewards in the form of money to the warrior who slays the
king and commanders of the enemy and Kautilya proposes a graded scale of pay for
slaying different officers, destroying elephants, chariots, horses etc. (ibid.).
The crucial point about Kautilya’s view of war becomes apparent when we
compare his ideas with the standard ideas about religious and holy war in the epic
literature of classical India. I have stressed the distinction between the literature on
artha and the literature on dharma . Although the epic Mahabharata is not a
systematic treatise on ideology and war, it is here that we find the most typical
examples of the righteous war, the war waged according to dharma (dharmayuddha ).
In the Mahabharata , a war must be waged according to rightousness or the natural
law of the universe. In fact, in the Mahabharata war is a goal in itself. Kautilya
prefers peace because most of the time peace is more conducive to prosperity and
security:

Acquisition and security (of property) are dependent on peace and industry.
Effort to achieve the results of work undertaken is industry. Absence of
disturbance to the enjoyment of the results achieved from work is peace (KA
6.2 Shamashastry 312).

Peace is in itself a goal to Kautilya but when necessary war must be waged by any
means. This stands in sharp contrast to the ideal world of chivalry we meet in the
epic literature and some of the dharma literature. A king must not wage war by
unjust means, according to the teacher Bhishma of the Mahabharata . What kind of
ruler would rejoice in an unjust victory, a victory that does not conform to dharma
(adharmavijaya ), he asks.12 A victory won through unrighteousness weakens both
the king himself and the world. The king must never wish to conquer through
illusion or magic (maya ) or through deceit (dambha ) (Shantiparvan , 97.23). If we
look at the more specific rules in warfare in the Mahabharata , we will find that many
of them seem to be part of a code of chivalry akin to that of medieval Europe. A
soldier whose armor is broken, who folds his hands, or who has thrown down his
weapons may be taken prisoner, but may not be killed (Shantiparvan , 97.3). The
aged, the children, women, one who shows he surrenders by having a straw in his
mouth, and again one who says ‘I am yours’ must not be killed (Shantiparvan ,
99.47). Nor may one kill those who are sleeping, are thirsty, wearied, are confused
or scattered in mind.13 To this list is added those who have been struck, or been
weakened, or have started on the path of liberation (i.e. religious mendicants), and
those who are walking, drinking or eating.

12
Shantiparvan 97.1. The Mahabharata . Edited by V.S. Sukthankar and S.K. Belvalkar. Poona, India:
Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. 1948. From now on I will simply refer to the relevant verses
in the Shantiparvan since this is the part of the Mahabharata of relevance here.
13
These terms could perhaps alternatively refer to sprains in the bones caused by fighting.
 Kautilya 49

The world of the Mahabharata is thus very different from the world of Kautilya.
Kautilya has much to say about strategy and tactics. He speaks about the use of
espionage, armor, siege warfare and battle formations. But he takes little or no
interest in the ethical aspects of warfare. By contrast, in the Mahabharata , issues
relating to what we now term jus in bello are of great concern, as we have seen. Yet,
since war is the cosmic duty of the king, and is undertaken whenever the king so
decides, questions about the perspective of jus ad bellum have little relevance.
Kautilya, for his part, shows scant interest in either of these two central aspects of
the ethics of war. In his view, war should be fought only when there is an
opportunity to gain something without risking too much. War is a means to the end
of prosperity and stability. If the king and his generals decide that they can gain
something by appearing generous and just towards the neighboring king and his
people, then they will exercise these virtues as part of the toolbox of foreign policy.
Inversely, if they need to destroy the enemy society through fire, poisoning and
secret agents, that too will be done.
Bravery and chivlary are hallmarks of the ideology of war in the literature of
the epics and the literature on dharma . Prudence and treason are hallmarks of
Kautilya’s world view and of the wider literature on artha and the wielding of the
rod. Kautilya’s scepticism toward the idea of bravery for its own sake is an issue that
is taken up by his followers in later history. In fact, when we talk about ideologies of
war and warfare in ancient India, it may be a good idea to treat Kautilya not just as
a person with individual views but as a tradition to which a number of later writers
adhere. Later writers on statecraft and war were aware of Kautilya’s work and cite
him without explicit reference. Two of the most important writers in the Kautilya-
tradition were Kamandaki (eighth century) and Somadeva (tenth century) both
authors of important books on statecraft and war in the Indian Middle Ages. War as
a means is generally judged to be ambiguous by these thinkers, it is a dangerous
business. The king should not be a warmonger, says Kamandaki.14 Kamandaki is
clearly among those who are most eager to warn the king of the dangers of war.
The text presents a long list of the common causes of war and instructs the king to
avoid most wars if possible (Kamandaki [8th cent. AD] 1982: chap. 10). A number
of conciliatory measures should be adopted before thinking of war even if the king is
harassed by enemies, and there is an element of morality in the precepts of the
manual. A king should never join an ally in a campaign if the ally is unrighteous, or
adharmic , whereas a rightous ally should be given aid even if the king will thereby
risk his own life (ibid.: chap. 10.9). In other words, morality based in a religious
worldview, the dharma , keeps surfacing in the tradition on statecraft. Surprisingly,
morality is completely absent in Kautilya’s most famous follower, Somadeva Suri,
an eminent Jaina monk of the tenth century. Somadeva is very much in the
tradition of Kautilya, in fact he is firmly utilitarian, when he defines dharma as that
which leads to worldly success (abhyudaya ) and adharma , conversely, is simply that
which yields fruits contrary to the desired goals (Somadeva Suri [10th cent. AD]
1.2). Somadeva encourages the same kind of self-restraint as Kautilya, but unlike
the latter does discuss how opponents ought to be treated in battle. One should not
kill a foe who has fallen to his feet in battle, and those who fly from action should be

14
Kamandaki: chap. 9.74. The commentary glosses ativigrahi with virodhakari .
50 Torkel Brekke

released (ibid.: 30.88
/89). Somadeva is a great believer in trust or confidence and
he denounces the breach of trust in strong words (ibid.: 30.96
/98). This, however,
does not apply to the battlefield, for treacherous warfare (kutayuddha ) is praised by
Somadeva (ibid.: 30.106
/108).

Kautilya in Modern India

Kautilya has exerted great influence on later Indian thinkers on statecraft and war
and his influence is not absent even today. For the past 150 years history has been
politicized in India.15 Thus, it is not surprising to find that Kautilya is often used in
political arguments today. It has been pointed out that modern militant Hindus, like
the RSS (Rashtriya Svayamsevak Sangh), look back on the rule of Kautilya and his
king Candragupta Maurya as a golden age. These militants accuse the religious
traditions of Buddhists and Jainas of undermining India’s military power by their
excessive zeal for non-violence (Jaini 1987: 122). This sounds a bit like the
accusation made by Machiavelli himself against Christianity: Christian otherworld-
liness had made Europe less fit for political affairs and statecraft. Europe forgot
Cicero and Cæsar; India forgot Kautilya and Candragupta Maurya. Much like
Machiavelli, the authors inspired by the Arthashastra are interested in myth and
religion mainly in order to understand the psychology of human social behaviour,
which is considered to be indispensible knowledge to the sovereign (Preus 1979:
171
/190). Some writers have nevertheless concluded that the comparison between
Kautilya and Machiavelli is misleading.16
Kautilya has been used to defend the puzzling claim that ancient India had a
conception of human rights expressed first and foremost in the laws of battle
(Sundara Raj 2002: 1
/23). More plausible is the use of Kautilya in strategic
writing. The Indian general G.D. Bakshi, for instance, writes in his book on classical
Indian warfare that what Kautilya essentially did was to replace the standard
paradigm of attrition warfare found in the Mahabharata with a paradigm of
information warfare based on deception. Although this is an interesting thought, it
must be said that there are serious problems with an approach that sees the
Mahabharata as a real-world attrition-warfare paradigm. In any case, the modern
miltiary interest in classical Indian theories of warfare is notable in itself and may
perhaps be compared with the love for the study of Greek battles in modern
American military academies.
The study of Kautilya and the wider Indian tradition is valuable for gaining an
understanding of how humanity has approached the problem of war and warfare.
About the direct application of such ideas to contemporary politics I am more
sceptical. Kautilya’s lesson is of a general historical nature. In his far-ranging
critique of the modern Clausewitzean philosophy of war, which has dominated
Western military thinkers in the twentieth century, the military historian John
Keegan concludes that future peacekeepers have much to learn from alternative

15
See for instance Brekke 2002.
16
See for instance Rao, 1958: 106
/107, who asserts that Machiavelli was a prophet of force while
Kautilya followed Aristotle and Plato in regarding the state as a moral institution.
 Kautilya 51

military cultures, both that of the Orient and that of the primitive world (Keegan
1994: 392). There is a need to rediscover the wisdom of restraint in warfare,
Keegan says, and to reject the view that war and politics belong within the same
continuum. I agree that we have something to learn from alternative military
cultures as long as we do not expect to find only wisdom of restraint. The greatest
medieval follower of Kautilya in India mentioned above, the Jain monk Somadeva,
defines war thus: ‘War with weapons starts when other means of conquering the
enemy are exhausted’ (Somadeva Suri 30.5).17 Somadeva would have much to talk
with Clausewitz about, it seems.

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52 Torkel Brekke

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Biography
Torkel Brekke (PhD, University of Oslo, 1999) is a senior research fellow at
the Institute of Culture Studies, University of Oslo. Recently published works
include: Religious Motivation and the Origins of Buddhism (London: RoutledgeCur-
zon, 2002) and Makers of Modern Indian Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2002). His present research is focusing on ethics and war in South Asian
religions, and terrorism.