Kautilya.Arthashastra. Translated by R. Shamasastry. Bangalore: Government Press, 1915.
Kautilya's Arthashastra is an excellent treatise on statecraft, economic policy and military strategy. it is said to have been written by Kautilya, also known by the name Chanakya or Vishnugupta, the prime minister of India's first great emperor, Chandragupta Maurya.
In Arthashastra, Kautilya 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.
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. 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 and medicine. 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.
This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.
| Original: |
This work was published before January 1, 1930, and is in thepublic domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse |
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| Translation: |
This work is in thepublic domain in theUnited States because it was published before January 1, 1930. The longest-living author of this work died in 1944, so this work is in thepublic domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author'slife plus 80 years or less. This work may be in thepublic domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply therule of the shorter term toforeign works.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse |
