Arthashastra (or "Treatise on Power") is a Hindu treatise about power.
Kautilya, the Machiavellian prime minister who is believed to have engineered the rise to power of Chandragupta Maurya (r. 321–297 B.C.E. ), the founder of the Maurya dynasty, wrote a text on power and politics.
- The Arthashastra was created as a handbook for the monarch to use in order to better manage the people in his realm as well as the people in the neighboring kingdoms.
- The basic premise of the Arthashastra was that the monarch desired to stay in power and should do whatever it needed to keep it.
Within the kingdom, Kautilya pushed for a harsh and authoritarian administration, supported by a vast network of spies tasked with gathering information and gauging public opinion.
- Men masquerading as traveling ascetics were among the spies, allowing them to roam about freely.
- The book also recommended the monarch to appoint special spies to watch his closest advisors' ambitions, with these spies reporting exclusively to the king.
- The Arthashastra believed that each monarch sought to expand his realm at the cost of his neighbors when it came to neighboring nations.
- Weaker neighbors were to be invaded and absorbed, while stronger neighbors were to be pacified or delayed in the hopes of countering these stronger nations by forging new alliances.
Although the Arthashastra was never a governing Indian dynasty's "Bible," it described political theory and procedures that existed in ancient and medieval India, and may even be detected in modern parliamentary politics.
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