Documentos de Académico
Documentos de Profesional
Documentos de Cultura
ARTHASHASTRA
Three legitimate goals of individuals: kama (love), artha (wealth) and dharma (religion and
morality)
Arthashastra science of kingship, business of running a state treatise on political economy
Political organization comprised of the kingdom (rajya) and republics (sanghas)
The king embodied entrepreneurial and regulatory role: farming and manufacturing, taxing
authority, building and stocking of storehouses, framing market policies to sustain ideals of
fair price and avoid extreme price fluctuations, arbiter of disputes and keeper of public order
Author Kautilya or Kautalya (Brahmin gotra) ?
Meant for (a) education to Prince and (b) social class of Brahmin ministers
Date written: Mauryan (321-175 BCE) or post Mauryan (150 CE)
Contemporary literature: The art of war by Sun Tzu (China) and The Prince by Machiavelli
(Europe)
What was the status of private property and especially land tenure in
the society of the Arthashastra?
What are the principles of leadership which emanate from Arthashastra?
What is the significance of the primacy of dharma over artha?
Notion of kings bhaga (share); shad-bhagin (1/6th ) proportion carried into the tax
levied by the state on the produce of the land as well as on other economic
transactions.
The king is told not to interfere in the Naradasmriti: A householders house and his
field are considered as the two fundamentals of his existence. Therefore, let not the
king upset either of them.
Security of kings layout of palaces provided with defenses and hidden passageways; to
guard from snakes and poisons: The parrot, the starling or the fork-tailed shrike shrieks
when there is fear of snakes or poison. In the proximity of poison, the heron becomes
frantic, the pheasant becomes faint, the intoxicated cuckoo dies, the eyes of the chakora
bird become discoloured (1.20.7-8)
King vulnerable to machinations by own men, most vulnerable when making love: In the
inner apartments he should visit the queen after she had been cleared by old women.
For, concealing himself in the queens chamber, Bhadrasena was killed by his brother,
and Karusha was killed by his son, concealed in his mothers bed. The king of Kashi was
killed by the queen, mixing fried grain with poison under the guise of honey; Vairantya
was killed by the queen with an anklet smeared with poison; the king of the Sauviras with
a poison-smeared girdle-jewel; Jalutha with a poison-smeared mirror; Viduratha was killed
by the queen who concealed a weapon in the braid of her hair. (1.20.14-16)
Recognise the opportunities of peculation by corrupt officials; lists 40 kinds of
embezzlements
Building and maintaining storehouses for the centralized military and during emergencies:
From his granary the king should set apart one half for the people in the countryside in times
of distress, and use the other half. And he should replace old stock with new. (2.15.22-23)
- Indication of uncertainty in food production and ability of kingdom to take remedial
measures.
4 storehouses: Granary (Koshtagara); forest products (kupyagriham); armoury (ayudhagaram)
and the treasury (kosha or kosha-graham)
Overseer of the granary (koshtagara-adhyaksha) stocks the granary from kings own farms,
under the supervison of the overseer of royal farmland (sita-adhyaksha), from farm produce in
lieu of land tax, and from farmers working their own land.
Stock includes two varieties of rice (shali and vrihi), grains (kodrava, priyangu, udraka, wheat,
barley and sesame); beans (mudga and masha), oils, sugars (treacle, jiggery, refined sugar),
salt, spices (pepper, ginger, cumin, bitter kirata, mustard, coriander, etc).
Weight and volume measures; standards for distribution of stuffs (finer quality for animals of
higher order and humans and quantity proportional to body size)
Arthashastra: M arkets
As with farming and herding, the king has a dual role in trade, being
both a participant, making and selling royal goods, and a regulator (as
well as a taxer) of the trade of the people. The most significant feature
of the ancient economy for the practice and regulation of trade is the
comparative scarcity of capital and the very high degree of risk and
uncertainty of the ancient economy, with sudden and dramatic changes
of price.
Property rights in land (is the European doctrine of Oriental Despotism
true for ancient India? Pp.119 Arthashastra.
Kinsmen, neighbors and creditors, in that order, shall have the right to buy land that is for sale.
After that, others who are outsiders may buy. Owners shall proclaim a dwelling for sale in front
of the house, in the presence of members of forty neighboring families. And a field, and a park,
an embankment, a tank or a reservoir at the boundaries, in the presence of village elders who
are neighbors, according to the extent of the boundary, saying, At this price who is willing to
buy? When it has been proclaimed three times without objection, the buyer is entitled to buy.
Arthashastra: M arkets
There is true private property in the hypothetical kingdom of
Arthashastra. But, it is conditioned by the prior claims of kinship,
neighborhood, indebtedness and other conditions, and it is biased
against strangers.
Long-distance traders brought goods in bulk to the gate, where they
were bought by local traders to sell at retail inside the city. Long
distance traders were not allowed to sell at retail. The city gate is the
location where the wholesalers and the retailers meet and transact
business. It is also the place where the king imposes taxes in the form
of custom duties, decided by overseer of trade (shuka-adhyaksha).
The regulator The overseer of Trade (panya-adhyaksha) should be
conversant with the difference in the prices of goods of high value
and of low value, and the desirability or underdesirability of goods of
various kinds, whether produced on land or in water and whether they
Arthashastra: M arkets
The notion of fair profits is implied by the advice that the overseer
of trade should fix a profit for traders of 5% above the permitted
purchase price of the local goods, and 10% for foreign goods. The
aim is to strike a balance among the kings profit, the merchants
profit and the publics need for a supply of goods at a fair and
steady price.
Equity vs efficiency the difficulty and costs of enforcing a fair-price
market; the invitation it gives to various kinds of evasion such as
smuggling and black-market transactions; the flatness of incentives
under such system, encouraging scope for adulteration.
Roman trade in the subcontinent according to the Periplus Maris Erythraei 1st century CE.
Roman gold coins excavated in Pudukottai, India. One coin of Caligula (31-41
CE), and two coins of Nero (54-68). British Museum.
Caste system
Maya-society-Castes-as-in India
http://historicalleys.blogspot.in/2014/08/the-wandering-y.html