The Nitisara by Kamandaka | 1

The Nitisara by Kamandaka | 1 IDSA MONOGRAPH SERIES NO. 63 MARCH 2019 The Nitisara by Kamandaka Continuity and Change from Kautilya’s Arthashastra Pradeep Kumar Gautam 2 | Pradeep Kumar Gautam Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, sorted in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo-copying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA). ISBN: 978-93-82169-82-6 Disclaimer: The views expressed in this Monograph are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Institute or the Government of India. First Published: March 2019 Price: Rs. Published by: Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses No.1, Development Enclave, Rao Tula Ram Marg, Delhi Cantt., New Delhi - 110 010 Tel. (91-11) 2671-7983 Fax.(91-11) 2615 4191 E-mail: [email protected] Website: http://www.idsa.in Layout & Cover by: Vaijayanti Patankar Printed at: M/S The Nitisara by Kamandaka | 3 MONOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR One Hundred Years of Kautilya’s Arthasastra IDSA Monograph Series No. 20 July 2013 Kautilya’s Arthashastra: Contemporary Issues and Comparison IDSA Monograph Series No. 47 October 2015 Understanding Dharma and Artha in Statecraft through Kautilya’s Arthashastra IDSA Monograph Series No. 53 July 2016 4 | Pradeep Kumar Gautam The Nitisara by Kamandaka | 5 CONTENTS Acknowledgements .............................................................. 7 Salutation ......................................................................... 8 PART I: BACKGROUND Chapter 1 Introduction .................................................................... 10 Chapter 2 Some Important Milestones and Influences in the Likely Period When the Text was Written ................. 40 Chapter 3 Description of the Sargas ................................................ 54 PART II: CONTINUITIES AND CHANGES Chapter 4 Some Common Characteristics of Kautilya and Kamandaka .............................................................. 92 Chapter 5 Different Characteristics of Kautilya and Kamandaka .............................................................. 97 Chapter 6 Some Unique Features of Kamandaka ........................... 106 Chapter 7 Contemporary Relevance and Conclusion ...................... 117 LIST OF FIGURES 2.1 Kingdoms of Early and Ancient Medieval India ...... 52 2.2 Map of Early India ................................................... 53 REFERENCES ................................................................... 127 6 | Pradeep Kumar Gautam The Nitisara by Kamandaka | 7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I thank the panelists and participants in my fellow seminars in 2017 for engaging with the topic and giving valuable suggestions. I also thank Ms Neha Kohli, the Associate Editor, her team of production staff and Ms Jyoti Sahni, the copy editor, for ironing out the script. A personal thanks to the staff of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) library for their sustained help. Also, a special thanks to the two anonymous referees for their observations which helped me to reorder and revise my work. I remain responsible for what I have written and assert my moral rights as an author. 8 | Pradeep Kumar Gautam SALUTATION We are grateful for the availability of Kautilya's Arthashastra in the public domain to an unnamed pandit of Tanjore district who handed over an old commentary by (the unknown) Bhattasvamin to Dr R. Shamasastry of Government Oriental Library, Mysore, who in turn made public its English translation in 1915. We are grateful to Dr R. Shamasastry, other scholars such as Ganpati Shastri and to Professor R.P. Kangle of Bombay University who updated the entire text of Kautilya in mid- twentieth century, since extant to a high degree of authenticity and international standard. Similarly, we are thankful for availability of the work of Kamandaka in the public domain in written English, beginning the last quarter of the nineteenth century, due to the untiring efforts of Major Markham Kittoe (an enthusiastic antiquarian of that era), Raja Dr Rajendralala Mitra and Dr Sisir Kumar Mitra of the Asiatic Society, Calcutta. The Nitisara by Kamandaka | 9 PART I: BACKGROUND 10 | Pradeep Kumar Gautam CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Since Thucydides in Greece and Kautilya in India, the use of force and the possibility of controlling it have been the preoccupation of international political studies. —Robert J. Art and Kenneth Waltz1 It has to be remembered that warcraft was then regarded as of statecraft and so the various works on statecraft deal also with the art of war. —Jagadish Narayan Sarkar2 (T)he Arthasastra served as a model of strategic culture for the later authorities of ancient and early medieval India like Kamandaka and Somadeva Suri. —Krishnendu Ray3 India is one of the longest surviving civilizations. So, a question may be asked as to what has survived or what has not changed? 1 Robert J. Art and Kenneth Waltz, ‘Technology, Strategy and the Use of Force’, in Robert J. Art and Kenneth Waltz (eds), The Use of Force, Boston: Little, Brown, 1971, p. 4. The quoted passage is very popular and also features in Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics, Berkeley: Addison-Wesley, 1979, p.186 and K.M. Fierke, Critical Approaches to International Security, 2nd edition, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015, p. 18. 2 Jagadish Narayan Sarkar, The Art of War in Medieval India, New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1984, pp. 1, 4. 3 Krishnendu Ray, ‘Yuddha and Vijay: Concepts of War and Conquest in Ancient and Early Medieval India (up to CE 1300)’, in Kaushik Roy and Peter Lorge (eds), Chinese and Indian Warfare: From the Classical Age to 1870, London and New York: Routledge, 2015, p.47. The Nitisara by Kamandaka | 11 In this study, I argue that many concepts and principles of statecraft have not changed. These continuities in human social behaviour seem to be unchanging and are embedded in the vocabulary and concepts in Indian traditions. They have survived due to their own enduring logic. This requires further explanation. In relation to world politics and foreign policy, R.P. Kangle argues for the relevance of Kautilya’s Arthashastra by giving examples, such as: that same distrust of one nation by another, the same pursuit of its own interests by every nation tempered only by consideration of expediency, the same efforts to secure alliances with the same cynical disregard of them in self-interest, the same kind of intelligence service maintained by one nation in the territory of another.4 Kangle’s study states that the Arthashastra may have lost much of its validity with the establishment of the Mughal Empire and the partial advent of British rule. However, he qualifies this by alluding to the fact that the Nitisara and other works based on Kautilya did not pass into oblivion even then.5 In the framework of warcraft and statecraft, to this day, Kautilya’s Arthashastra, with its key concepts and vocabulary, has endured as the base text. More and more ideas have been added, and a few changed, with the passage of time, but the flavour of enduring and unchanging nature of diplomacy, statecraft and warcraft remains unchanged. This tradition can be seen in three classical texts, also considered three milestones, on political science, statecraft, warfare and security-related issues. First is Kautilya’s Arthashastra, followed by subsequent texts such as 4 R.P. Kangle, The Kautiliya Arthasastra, Part III: A Study, 2nd edition, 7th reprint, Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass, 2010, p. 283. 5 Ibid., p. 280. 12 | Pradeep Kumar Gautam The Nitisara (or the Elements of Polity) by Kamandaka, translated and edited by Rajendralala Mitra, and The Sukraniti .6 It is presumed that readers may be now familiar with the work of Kautilya. For those who are not familiar, it may be necessary to have a working knowledge of the text with its contemporary relevance. Indeed, sufficient literature now exists on this subject that, in keeping with modern technology, is freely available in the electronic format.7 In this study, only the Nitisara will be examined and compared with its ‘mother text’, Kautilya’s Arthashastra. The Appendix at the end of this chapter lists out the contents of Kautilya’s Arthashastra and Nitisara for comparison. MOTIVATION OF WRITING AND COMPILING THE ARTHASHASTRA BY KAUTILYA There are various reasons as to why the text was constructed, namely, for: consolidating an empire; overthrowing an unjust king (of the Nanda dynasty); internal security and governance; the threat from foreign invasion; ensuring that statecraft remains secular and the literature on artha survives an onslaught by the church; and so on. Traditionally, Kautilya, also known as 6 R.P. Kangle, The Kautiliya Arthasastra, Part II: An English Translation with Critical and Explanatory Notes, 2nd edition, 7th reprint, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2010; Rajendralala Mitra (ed.), The Nitisara or the Elements of Polity by Kamandaki, Bibliotheca Indica: Collection of Oriental Works, published under the superintendent of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, No. 179, printed by Calcutta Baptist Mission Press in 1861, revised with English translation by Sisir Kumar Mitra, Calcutta: The Asiatic Society (reprinted), 1982(1849); and Benoy Kumar Sarkar, The Sukraniti, 2nd edition, New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation/Munshiram Manoharlal, 1975(1914). Two spellings are common: Kamandaka or Kamandaki. Absence of diacritical notations

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