The instructions for the king can be seen as a metaphor for any sort of leader, in any sort of person trying to garner success and be successful in the world. There's a large roll for spies in this ideal state, which fascinite. The style and structure of the text is quite terse; it doesn't really fit into one literary gena or another. It has these verses that i've mentioned at the end of each chapter - they are mostly in prose. So you don't see these kinds of characters anywhere else but india. Whether they ever existed,. but it's a great story. I like to think this is who i would have been in ancient india.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ancient Sanskrit text the Arthashastra, regarded as one of the major works of Indian literature. Written in the style of a scientific treatise, it provides rulers with a guide on how to govern their territory and sets out what the structure, economic policy and foreign affairs of the ideal state should be. According to legend, it was written by Chanakya, a political advisor to the ruler Chandragupta Maurya (reigned 321 – 297 BC) who founded the Mauryan Empire, the first great Empire in the Indian subcontinent. As the Arthashastra asserts that a ruler should pursue his goals ruthlessly by whatever means is required, it has been compared with the 16th-century work The Prince by Machiavelli. Today, it is widely viewed as presenting a sophisticated and refined analysis of the nature, dynamics and challenges of rulership, and scholars value it partly because it undermines colonial stereotypes of what early South Asian society was like.
With
Jessica Frazier
Lecturer in the Study of Religion at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies
James Hegarty
Professor of Sanskrit and Indian Religions at Cardiff University
And
Deven Patel
Associate Professor of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania
Producer: Simon Tillotson