Chapter 1
1. The terms ‘Orientalism’ and ‘Indology” are of Western origin and are used to refer first to Westerners, and subsequently to Indians as well, specializing in Eastern and Indian/South Asian cultures respectively. Orientalism, of late, has been roundly decried as a misrepresentation and a veiled attempt to colonize and dominate the Eastern societies and cultures. See Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978).
2. See, for example, K. P. Jayaswal, Hindu Polity: A Constitutional History of India in Hindu Times (Calcutta: Butterworth, 1924); A. S. Altekar, State and Government in India (Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass, 1958, [1949]).
3. Surendra Nath Dasgupta, History of Indian Philosophy, five volumes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922).
4. Even S. Radhakrishnan sees Indian philosophy through metaphysical lenses. See his Indian Philosophy, 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998; first published 1923, revised 1929.
5. See Bimal Krishna Matilal, Language and Reality: Indian Philosophy and Contemporary Issues (Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass, 1990, 2nd ed., first published 1985); Perception: An Essay on Classical Indian Theories of Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986); The Word and the World: India’s Contribution to the Study of Language (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990).
6. See, for example, the works of R. S. Sharma, Romila Thapar and others cited below. Other scholars in this regard are B. N. S. Yadav, D. N. Jha and Vivekanand Jha, among others.
7. L. N. Rangarajan, Kautilya The Arthashastra (New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 1992).
8. R. P. Kangle, The Kautilya Arthashastra (Bombay: Bombay University Press, 1965), three vols; Kautilya Arthashastra (Sanskrit Text, English translation, Introduction), Translated by R. Shamasastry, edited by V Narayan (Delhi: Chaukhamba Sanskrit Pratisthan, 2005), 2 vols.
9. Rangarajan, Kautilya The Arthashastra, p. 27.
10. S. C. Mishra, Evolution of Kautilya’s Arthashastra: An Inscriptional Approach, Foreword by R. S. Sharma (Delhi: Anamika, 1997). Mishra argues:
‘The final emendation of the text seems to have been done around the 12th century AD. The inscriptions from the 9th to 12th centuries assume importance as they have incorporated some very significant terms of our text in large numbers. The epigraphs of this time-bracket not only give the continual echoes of the designations and officers of the functionaries of the Arthashastra but also numerous references to adhyaksap-racara, the very title of Book II in our text. Book II of the Arthashastra appears to have come down to us as a result of some kind of overhauling, reshuffling and/or recasting during this time-bracket, and the aggregate of the chapters has derived the name of adhyaksapracara’ (p. 209–10).
Sharma in his Foreword finds ‘many of the findings of the author acceptable’ and hopes a scholarly debate may lead to some rethinking of some long-held inferences of other scholars.’
11. Romila Thapar, Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, rev. ed.), pp. 218–225.
12. T. R. Trautmann, ‘The Structure and Composition of the Kautilya Arthashastra’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Iowa, 1968, cited in Rangarajan, Kautilya Arthashastra, pp. 19–20. See also S. C. Mishra (1997), Evolution of Kautilya’s Arthashastra.
13. Kangle, The Kautilya Arthashastra, 1965, part III, p. 104.
14. Rangarajan, Kautilya: The Arthashastra, p. 53.
15. The idea/concept of ‘oriental despotism’ has a long lineage going back to Aristotle and Montesquieu. Karl Wittfogel developed it further, linking it to the concept of ‘hydraulic’ civilizations/societies as the structural basis of ‘total power’ by dint of control over water resources for population and irrigation managed by an agrarian bureaucracy. Marx and Engels also fell into this misconstrued Orientalist conceptual trap by postulating a specific mode of production in Europe, i.e., feudalism. In the Asian context, they thought, Asiatic mode of production (AMP) rather than feudal mode of production reigned supreme. In their imagination the Asiatic climatic and geographical conditions, coupled with the absence of private property and stagnant peasant production and craftsmanship, created atomistic village communities at the base and the despotic state at the top. See Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (1957). Even Ronald Inden, Imagining India (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990) is not completely free of Orientalist biases. These Orientalist distortions stand refuted by D. D. Kosambi and other Indian historians. Kautilya’s Arthashastra and Asoka’s edicts are the self-evident textual and archeological refutation of both oriental despotism and Asiatic mode of production.
16. Rangarajan, Kautilya: The Arthashastra, p. 86.
17. Romila Thapar, Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas.
18. Rangarajan, Kautilya: The Arthashastra, 8.1.63, p. 127.
19. Ibid., p. 304.
20. Romila Thapar Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas (1997), ch. IV, p. 98.
21. R. S. Sharma, Aspects of Political Ideas and Institutions in Ancient India (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1991, 3rd rev. ed.), chaps. XIV, XXII. See also his India’s Ancient Past (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005), chaps. 12, 13, 15 and 16.
22. Burton Stein, A History of India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 22.
23. Ibid.
24. Romila Thapar, Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas (1997), p. 8.
25. Kangle, The Kautilya Arthashastra.
26. J. C. Heesterman: The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985).
27. Kangle (1965), The Kautilya Arthashastra, p. 269.
28. Ibid., p. 270.
29. Heesterman (1985), The Inner Conflict of Tradition, chapters 1 and 9.
30. Ibid., 133.
31. R. S. Sharma, Aspects of Political Ideas and Institutions in Ancient India (1991), p. 393.
32. K P. Jayaswal (1924); V R. R. Dikshitar, The Mauryan Polity (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1932, reprint 1993).
33. Dikshitar, The Mauryan Polity (1932), p. 78.
34. Quoted in Dikshitar, The Mauryan Polity (1932), p. 77.
35. For illuminating discovery of feudalism in Indian history and the pioneering contribution to this interpretation, see the nine papers published together under the caption ‘D. D. Kosambi: The Man and His Work’, guest-edited by Romila Thapar in the Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLIII, No. 30, July 26-August 1, 2008: 34–108. For an excellent review of the feudal school of historiography and a few dissenting, voices, see Hermann Kulke (ed.), The State in India 1000–1700 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), especially the Introduction by Kulke and Harbans Mukhia ‘Was There Feudalism in Indian History?’
36. Sharma (1991), Aspects of Political Ideas and Institutions in Ancient India, pp. 263–4.
37. Romila Thapar, The Penguin History of Early India (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2003), pp. 195–7.
38. Sharma, 1991, Aspects of Political Ideas and Institutions in Ancient India, pp. 399–400.
39. Ibid: Chapter V
40. See Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, ‘Kosambi and the Discourse of Civilization’, The Hindu, New Delhi, 31 July 2008, p. 9.
41. Hermann Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund, A History of India (New Delhi: Rupa & Co., 1991), p. 63.
42. Ibid., p. 63.
43. Dikshitar, 1992, The Mauryan Polity, pp. 74–77
44. Ibid.
45. Rangarajan, Arthashastra (1992), 7.15.13–20,12.1.1–9, p. 543–544.
46. For works of a leading Neo-realist theorist, see Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State, and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959); and Scott Sagan and Kenneth Waltz (eds), The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed (New York: WW Norton, 2003). Waltz thinks that more nuclear powers may be good for international peace due to deterrence, while Sagan is a non-proliferationist as new nuclear-weapons-states are more likely than not to lack organizational and political ability. Ironically, two modern works of geopolitical nature K.M. Panikkar, Asia and Western Dominance (Mumbai: Somaiya, Special Indian edition, 1999, first published 1953; and Sanjay B Chaturvedi ‘Representing Post-Colonial India: Inclusive, Exclusive Geopolitical Imaginations’, in Klaus Dodds and David Alkinson (eds), Geographical Traditions: A Century of Geographical Thought (London: Routledge, 2000) pass Kautilya’s Arthshastra by without even a nod!
47. J. R. Mitra (ed.), KamaandakiyaNitisara (Calcutta, 1984).
48. Kulke and Rothermund (1991), A History of India, p. 63.
49. Ibid.
50. Kulke and Rothermund, A History of India (1991). In a passage quoted in the text above (note 34) discount this probability, but their argument is as speculative as ours here. So it is their word against ours, without any positive historical evidence.
51. Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya, ‘Political Processes and the structure of Polity in Early Medieval India’, and M. Athar Ali, ‘Towards an Interpretation of the Mughal Empire’, both in Hermann Kulke (ed.), The State in India (1995).
52. Romila Thapar, Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas (1997), p. 96.
53. Dikshitar, The Mauryan Polity (1932), chap. II.