Chanakya: India's Machiavelli

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/chanakya-indias-truly-radical-machiavelli-12146

102 25 11 years ago

walterbell• 11 years ago

Is there a well-regarded complete translation? I found an introductory translation of selected writings from the 15-volume source, "Maxims Of Chanakya", by V.K. Subramanian, http://www.amazon.com/Maxims-Chanakya-V-K-Subramanian-ebook/...

fitzwatermellow• 11 years ago

From WikiSource: Kautilya (Chanakya). Arthashastra. Translated by R. Shamasastry. Bangalore: Government Press, 1915.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Arthashastra

Vedantic wisdom is like the ripened mango tree that when one fruit is plucked, two more give bloom. From the chapter on corporate espionage:

"THE acquisition of the help of corporations is better than the acquisition of an army, a friend, or profits. By means of conciliation and gifts, the conqueror should secure and enjoy the services of such corporations as are invincible to the enemy and are favourably disposed towards himself. But those who are opposed to him, he should put down by sowing the seeds of dissension among them and by secretly punishing them."

aneeshm• 11 years ago

I don't know whether it's well-regarded; I do however highly recommend the translation-cum-rearrangement by Rangarajan: http://www.amazon.com/Arthashastra-Penguin-classics-Kautilya... (I've read it myself, and found it quite good.)

(He's re-arranged it to be coherent for a modern reader; one reason for this is because the original was meant to be memorised and perhaps used from memory, and was ordered accordingly.)

emilga• 11 years ago

(He's re-arranged it to be coherent for a modern reader; one reason for this is because the original was meant to be memorised and perhaps used from memory, and was ordered accordingly.)

Interesting. Can you comment on how the original was arranged to facilitate memorization?

mitchtbaum4• 11 years ago

A word of caution on this:

Translators can misrepresent authors' views (for personal gain, from lack of cultural exposure, due to modern revisionism, etc). Wherever a term has pivotal meaning, I highly recommend consulting multiple dictionaries yourself and exploring etymological foundations, occasionally with related texts. Doing so has allowed me to understand many great works completely differently than how many modern students report on them.

Epilogue:

I highly doubt a right hand man to Ashoka's grandfather has many meaningful, direct parallels with Machiavelli.

mitchtbaum4• 11 years ago

Here are two Sanskrit sources:

* https://sa.wikibooks.org/wiki/%E0%A4%85%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%8D%E0...

* https://ia800308.us.archive.org/23/items/arthasastraofkou014...

Two sources for R. Shamasastry's English translation:

* https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Arthashastra

* http://www.bharatadesam.com/literature/kautilya_arthashastra...

And four dictionaries:

* http://sanskritdictionary.com/?iencoding=deva&q=%E0%A4%85%E0...

* https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%85%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%8D%E...

* http://sanskritdictionary.org/arthatvaya

* http://spokensanskrit.de/index.php?script=HK&beginning=0+&ti...

And one transliteration:

* http://www.cc.kyoto-su.ac.jp/~yanom/sanskrit/dharmas/arthaz....

anilgulecha• 11 years ago

English PDFs are here: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/hindu2/2014/10/arthashastra-of-...

You would find going through the initial chapters a little boring, as they are largely definition heavy. The good parts start a little later. Everything from how spies should operate, to which herbs mixture cause great poisons, and torture solutions, to how gold, mercury, etc can be extracted.

mitchtbaum4• 11 years ago

Is there a well-regarded complete translation?

It seems for English translations, we can pick between: A: R. Shamasastry (1915), B: R. P. Kangle (1969), C: L.N. Rangarajan (1992) D: Patrick Olivelle (2012) [late edit. looks incomplete]

From my initial reviews of A and B, A misrepresents the original text vastly and B translates the original text using the words that are actually written in it. (I find that an important measure for a translation). Reviews of C indicate that it is incomplete and out of order. Therefore, B seems like the only potentially true translation. You can find it on Amazon[0], Google Books[1], and Digital Library of India[3][4][5].

For more information on how challenging it is to translate this work, check out this 2014 essay by Michael Liebig, Kauṭilya's Arthaśāstra: A Classic Text of Statecraft and an Untapped Political Science Resource. [2] (excerpted below)

0: http://www.amazon.com/Kautiliya-Arthasastra-Vols-Sanskrit-En...

1: https://books.google.co.in/books/about/Kautiliya_Arthasastra...

2: http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/17144/2/He...

3: http://www.dli.ernet.in/cgi-bin/metainfo.cgi?&barcode=999999...

4: http://www.dli.ernet.in/cgi-bin/metainfo.cgi?&barcode=999999...

5: https://github.com/cancerian0684/dli-downloader

METHODOLOGICAL PUZZLES AND METHODOLOGICAL/THEORETICAL APPROACHES

The Arthaśāstra's authoritative translations into English (R.P. Kangle) and German (J.J. Meyer) were made by Indologists. Also, the secondary literature on the work comes almost exclusively from the Indologists. 6 The Indological perspective is focused on Sanskrit philology, but with respect to specifically political issues, Indologists are (probably, inevitably so) 'semantic generalists'. Sanskrit philology has made the Arthaśāstra accessible to social science, but the philological meticulousness of Indologists cannot substitute political science terminology – which is the prerequisite for an adequate understanding of Kauṭilyan ideas. The problematic is not merely one of proper translation in terms of political science terminology, but brings up the issue of interpretation in the sense of adequate reconstruction of (latent) ideas or 'complexes of meaning' in the Arthaśāstra and the 'transposition' of such ideas into modern categories.

TheMagicHorsey• 11 years ago

The link has waaaaay too many ads. Almost unreadable if you don't run an ad blocker. The content provider should consider a more tasteful, smaller ad footprint. It might even increase ad engagement.

bobosha• 11 years ago

Interesting that they call someone who preceded Machiavelli by millenia as India's Machiavelli. Machiavelli is Italy's Chanakya.

whistlerbrk• 11 years ago

Let's not do that.

The article is 1) written for a western audience 2) I'm willing to bet that Machiavelli is MUCH more well known by political scholars than Chanakya

x5n1• 11 years ago

OP has a point. If you come 1,000 years before your ideas are more original than someone who comes 1,000 years after you.

arihant• 11 years ago

I'm willing to bet that Machiavelli is MUCH more well known by political scholars than Chanakya.

By western scholars. Honestly, I went to an Indian school and an American university, and I've never heard of Machiavelli until just now.

Chanakya, for me, is a household name. And so it is for over a billion people. I am willing to bet Machiavelli is not a common household name for over a billion people. So he's less popular, and he came a thousand years later. So I do think that OP has a point.

That said, there is no denying that this is an article written by an Indian for a Western publication. So it is apt in this context.

mc32• 11 years ago

Let's just say they are both. Just depends on reference point. My brother is taller than I am, I'm shorter than my brother. Both correct, if we presume the height discrepancy has been accurately told.

riteshkpr• 11 years ago

Nice, well written.

jane_is_here• 11 years ago

He was far more effective and far more successful than Machiavelli.

He selected Chandragupta to destroy the Nanda dynasty and used him to create the Maurya empire. The Mauryas ruled the largest empire ever in the Indian subcontinent. Ashoka, the third to rule the empire was responsible for the global transmission of Buddhism.

He was also far more vindictive than Machiavelli.

"It is also told that once, the thorns of a bush hurt Chankya's feet while he was passing through a forest. The wily Brahmin was cut to the quick, and wanted revenge. He got his revenge by pouring sugar syrup into the roots of the bush, thus ensuring that the ants ate up the root and destroyed the bush."

His main philosophy was "A debt should be paid off till the last penny; An enemy should be destroyed without a trace".

mitchtbaum4• 11 years ago

He was also far more vindictive than Machiavelli.
"It is also told that once, the thorns of a bush hurt Chankya's feet while he was passing through a forest. The wily Brahmin was cut to the quick, and wanted revenge. He got his revenge by pouring sugar syrup into the roots of the bush, thus ensuring that the ants ate up the root and destroyed the bush."

This seems wrongly interpreted on two levels. Processing sugarcane, while first occurring in India, happened about six centuries later [0]. That's hardly important, just that this legend, as people also tell it with milk[1], makes much more sense, allegorically.

As a metaphor, considering that it was while he did this that Chandragupta first saw Chanakya, and that together they united a bountiful, resilient people to overthrow a tyrant, we start to see his character. This legend also seems to show how forces of Nature bring people together in mystical ways that work to fix mistakes, ie, Chanakya avenging his father's murder by an extortionist king[2] with help from noble kings.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sugar#Early_use_of_...

1: http://bhojpuria.com/people/chankya.php

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanda_Empire

bakul• 11 years ago

This is like saying "Gandhi: India's true Martin Luther King".

roel_v• 11 years ago

Who's Gandhi? ducks

linux_devil• 11 years ago

Considering the time when arthashastra was written , I think it will be better to say : Machiavelli: Italy's Chanakya

bdsatish• 11 years ago

This is what I call the "X-of-Y syndrome" where:

* X is Western

* Y is Indian

* but Y is earlier than X

In this case X = Machiavelli, Y = Chanakya.

I've seen this trend especially among writers of the Western world. Reminds me of "Ahmedabad is the Manchester of India" even though cotton was mass-produced in India since the dawn of civilization.

galtwho• 11 years ago

or how about Shewag is India's Warner :)

m52go• 11 years ago

This is great! I've added Arthashastra to Canon of Man.

http://canonofman.com/item/7rJtzB3dWPkQHAK28

Chanakya: India's Machiavelli

Related Stories