Preface
Sri Chanakya Pandit, also known as Kautilya, or
sometimes as
Vishnugupta, attained lasting fame over 2300 years ago for two reasons:
(1) his Sanskrit writings on polity and (2) the practical and effective
counsel he gave to King Chandragupta Maurya, who conquered most of
India under his guidance. Of his writings, Artha-shastra
is the best known work, and many editions have come out in English. As
implied by its title, Artha-shastra is a scripture of
economic development meant for being studied by kings and court pandits.
Some of its topics are: king's duties, qualifications of ministers,
formation of villages, tax collection, proper punishments for
offenders, training of spies, declaring war and making peace,
protecting the citizens, etc.
Chanakya's Niti-shastra is this great
court pandit's
second most famous work. Niti is variously translated as "the
science of morality", "common sense", "expediencey" or "ethics". Hence Sri
Chanakya Niti-shastra contains sagacious wisdom that may be
applied in our daily affairs with profit. In other words, Chanakya
herewith teaches us how to be happy in mundane life. If the devotee can
improve his execution of devotional service to the Supreme Lord Sri
Krishna by taking practical counsel from Chanakya Pandit, then the
value of these proverbs will be increased. Past acharyas have
said that just as a woman who has a lover serves her own husband even
more attentively, similarly the devotee, though always absorbed in
thoughts of the Lord, carries out his so-called mundane activities with
even greater expertise.
Once, while on a morning walk with his disciples, our
spiritual master
Srila Prabhupada was queried by a lady devotee who said, "Chanakya
Pandit must have been a great devotee!" His Divine Grace replied, "No,
he was just a politician." It can be said that Chanakya's uncanny
ability to outguess the enemy at every step and to guide his king to
resounding victory has caused his name to stand out as one of history's
most profound political thinkers. Today in India's capital of Delhi,
the diplomatic housing enclave still bears his name: Chanakya Puri.
The British scholar Dr. F.W. Fleet has written,
"Kautilya (Chanakya) is
renowned not only as a king-maker, but also for being the greatest
Indian exponent of the art of government, the duties of king's
ministers and officials, and the methods of diplomacy." We are told
that the East India Company urged its British officers to study the
writings of Sri Chanakya Pandit if they at all hoped to be successful
in ruling India.
In his Artha-shastra, Chanakya Pandit
identifies himself
as being responsible for the overthrow of the corrupt Nanda dynasty of
Magadha (present-day Bihar State in Northern India). A brief account of
how he accomplished this is herewith given.
About 2300 years ago, the Greek conqueror Alexander the
Great invaded
the Indian sub-continent. His offensive upon the land's patchwork of
small Hindu empires proved to be highly successful due to the disunity
of the petty rulers. It was Chanakya Pandit who, feeling deeply
distressed at heart, searched for and discovered a qualified leader in
the person of Chandragupta Maurya. Although a mere dasi-putra,
that is, a son of a maidservant by the Magadha King Nanda, Chandragupta
was highly intelligent, courageous and physically powerful. Chanakya
cared little that by birth he should not have dared to approach the
throne. A man of acute discretion, Chanakya desired only that a ruler
of extraordinary capabilities be raised to the exalted post of King of
Magadha so that the offensive launched by the Yavanas (Greeks) could be
repulsed.
It is said that Chanakya had been personally offended by
King Nanda,
and that this powerful brahmana had vowed to keep his long shikha
unknotted until he saw to the demise of the contemptuous ruler and his
drunken princes. True to his oath, it was only after Chanakya Pandit
engineered a swift death for the degraded and worthless rulers of the
Nanda dynasty that this great brahmana was able to again tie up
his tuft of hair. There are several versions relating the exact way
that Chanakya had set about eliminating the Nandas, and it appears
historians have found it difficult to separate fact from folk legend as
regards to certain specific details.
After the Nanda downfall, it became easy for
Chandragupta to win the
support of the Magadha citizens, who responded warmly to their new
heroic and handsome young ruler. Kings of neighbouring states rallied
under Chandragupta's suzerainty, and the last of the Greeks headed by
Alexander's general Seleucus were defeated.
With the dual obstacles of the Nandas and Alexander's
troops out of the
way, Chanakya Pandit used every political device and court intrigue to
unite the greater portion of the Indian sub-continent. Under the Prime
Ministership of Chanakya, King Chandragupta Maurya conquered all the
lands up to Iran in the Northwest and down to the extremities of
Karnataka or Mysore State in the South. It was by his wits alone that
this skinny and ill-clad brahmana directed the formation of the
greatest Indian empire ever before seen in history (i.e. since the
beginning of Kali-yuga). Thus the indigenous Vedic culture of the
sacred land of Bharata was protected, and the spiritual practices of
the Hindus could go on unhampered.
Although many great savants of the science of niti,
such as
Brihaspati, Shukracharya, Bhartrhari and Vishnusharma, have echoed many
of these instructions in their own celebrated works*,
it is perhaps the
way that Chanakya applied his teachings of Niti-shastra
that has made him stand out as a significant historical figure. The
great Pandit teachers us that lofty ideals can become a certain reality
if we intelligently work towards achieving our goal in a determined,
progressive and practical manner.
Dr. R. Shamashastry, the translator of the English
version of
Kautilya's Artha-shastra, quotes a prediction from the Vishnu
Purana (fourth canto, twenty-fourth chapter) regarding the
appearance of Chanakya Pandit. This prediction, incidentally, was
scribed fifty centuries ago, nearly 2700 years before this political
heavyweight and man of destiny was to appear. The prediction informs
us: "[First] Mahapadma, then his sons—only nine in number—will be the
lords of the earth for a hundred years. A brahmana named
Kautilya will slay these Nandas. On their death, the Mauryas will enjoy
the earth. Kautilya himself will install Chandragupta on the throne.
His son will be Bindusara, and his son Ashokavardhana." Similar
prophecies are also repeated in the Bhagavata, Vaya
and Matsya Puranas.
In presenting this work, I have traced out and referred
to two old
English versions of Chanakya Niti-shastra published at
the close of the last century.** However, these
apparently were
translated by mere scholars (not devotees) who seem to have missed many
subtleties of Chanakya's vast wit and wisdom. Another unedited and
unpublished manuscript of Chanakya Niti-shastra with both English
translation and Latinised transliteration produced by the Vrindavana
ISKCON Centre was also referred to. It was, however, the learned
Vaishna pandit and Sanskit scholar Sri V. Badarayana Murthy of
the South Indian Madhva School who helped me see the depth and import
of these verses from the original Devanagari. A very few shlokas
which were perhaps irrelevant or otherwise not useful for our Vaishnava
readers have been omitted.
I have been told that our blessed spiritual master His
Divine Grace
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada had expressed a desire that Sri
Chanakya Niti-shastra be properly translated into English. It is
hoped that our present rendering will be at least useful, if not
instructive, to the reader. Let us examine now a few words on the
science of niti, or common sense, from the pen of Srila Thakur
Bhaktivinode, the great 19th century devotee pioneer of the worldwide
propagation of Lord Chaitanya's divine message.
Taking the two words "common sense" right up to their
highest level, he
has written:
Man's glory is in common sense,
Dictating us the grace,
That man is made to live and love
The beauteous Heaven's embrace.***
In other words, the real goal of niti, indeed the goal of life, is to
realise one's eternal position of Krishna consciousness. The
Bhagavad-gita
confirms Srila Thakur Bhaktivinode's view in the final line of its last
shloka:
dhruva nitir matir mama. A
translation of that full verse runs: "[Sanjaya said:] Wherever there is
Krishna, the master of all mystics, and wherever there is Arjuna, the
supreme archer, there will also certainly be opulence, victory,
extraordinary power, and morality (
niti). That is my opinion."
I would expecially like to thank Sri Raju Whabi (Rukmini
Krishna das)
of Bombay for his generous financial contribution. I am also grateful
to Srimati Rani Lila Ram Kumar Bhargava of Lucknow, a prominent ISKCON
Life Member, and her twin sons Lava and Kush of Raja Ram Kumar Press
for speedily bringing out this volume.
