The Wisdom of Chanakya

Introduction Chanakya, also known as Kautilya, has been called the Indian Machiavelli. The celebrated advisor to the Indian emperor Chandragupta Maurya (4th-3rd century B.C.) was best known for his treatise on the science of polity entitled Arthasastra. Of greater general interest is a collection of gnomic verses attributed to Chanakya in Sanskrit, which reached Nepal, Tibet and Burma, where they were translated and became very popular. An inscription on stone in Kathmandu dated 1413 A.D. described a king. Jaya Jyotirmalla (1407-28 A.D.), as "purified by all the learning such as Chanakya (and) who is the ocean of entire polity."

As late as the first quarter of the 20th century, Chanakya was very popular among Nepalese scholars. More than 250 additions of Chanakya Niti or Sar Samgraha, a collection of some 300 verses, in Sanskrit, Nepal Bhasha (Newari) and Nepali, have been noted. Most children learnt the Devanagri alphabet by reciting Chanakya and education for many began and ended with his work, a copy of which, laboriously copied by hand, are still to be found in many homes.

Translations of Chanakya in English and Latin appeared in the 19th century. More recently, Ludwik Sternbach has published authoritative studies of Chanakya. In 1971 Prem Bahadur Kansakar brought out an edition dating back to 1745 A.D. with a rendering in modern Newari along with the old Newari version and the Sanskrit text.

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