Kautilya lived in India from 375 to 283 BC. He ranks alongside Sun Tzu as one of the great early sages who wrote about the relations between polities, and thus also about wars between them. Kaushik Roy, Guru Nanak Chair Professor at Jadavpur University, India, joins Beatrice and Paul to discuss...
rusi.org
Kautilya lived in India from 375 to 283 BC. He ranks alongside Sun Tzu as one of the great early sages who wrote about the relations between polities, and thus also about wars between them. Kaushik Roy, Guru Nanak Chair Professor at Jadavpur University, India, joins Beatrice and Paul to discuss his work.
Kautilya’s approach to strategy included an understanding of inter-polity relations that assumed that one’s ‘enemy’s rear-enemy’ would be a good ally against the shared enemy: in other words, ‘make friends with your enemy’s enemy’. Meanwhile, insurgents would get support from other polities, and aggressors could be just, or just greedy. He thus paired ‘realist’ views with moral elements.
Also referred to as Chanakya or Vishnugupta, Kautilya was adviser to two successive emperors of the Mauryan Empire in India. He was thus not only a theoretician but also had considerable political influence. His main body of work is the Arthashastra, an ancient Sanskrit treatise on statecraft, political science, economic policy and military strategy. While one is hard-pushed to argue that he had a lasting influence on the following millennia of political or strategic thinking in India, his views are worth pondering, as they cast fresh light on strategy and on relations between states.
Kaushik Roy is Guru Nanak Chair Professor in the Department of History, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India and a Global Fellow at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Norway. He obtained his PhD from the Centre for Historical Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
The views or statements expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the podcast does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Views and opinions expressed by RUSI employees are those of the employees and do not necessarily reflect the view of RUSI.
: Kautilya: India’s Forerunner to Machiavelli?
with Professor Kaushik Roy
Beatrice Heuser: Thank you Paul and hello from Hamburg.
Kautilya who lived in India from 375 to 283 BCE, ranks with Sunzi as one of the great early sages who wrote about the relations between polities and thus also about the wars between them. His main oeuvre is the Arthaśhāstra. Somewhat confusingly, he is also referred to as Chanakaya Vishnugupta. But let us stick to Kautilya here. Kautilya was advisor to two successive emperors of the Maurya Empire in India. Indeed, if I understand it correctly, he helped the first of them ascend to the throne. He is thus, not only a theoretician, but also had political influence.
Kaushik Roy is Guru Nanak Chair Professor in the Department of History, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. He is also a Global Fellow at Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO), Norway. He has been attached to this Institute in different capacities for about a decade. At present, he is engaged in PRIO’s ‘Warring with Machines’ project. Previously, he has taught at Visva Bharati University at Santiniketan,West Bengal India and also at Presidents College, Kolkata, India. He obtained his PhD from the Centre for Historical Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has worked extensively on the wars of pre-modern, early modern and present eras.
Roy, Kautilya suggests that one should cultivate an “enemy’s rear-enemy”, in other words, make friends with your enemy’s enemy.(1)Kautilya is, therefore, often described as a “Realist”, i.e., somebody taking the most cynical view of international relations. What polities were there on the Indian Subcontinent, and were relations between them really that ruthlessly inimical?
Kaushik Roy: Okay. Now, Kautilya, his name comes from [the Sanskrit word] kutila, which means “the evil one.” So, there is an argument one can make that he is the father of “Realist” philosophy in international relations.
I mean if his operating range could be taken as the 3rd Century BCE, then he predates Machiavelli by quite a long time.(2) Kautliya also speaks of the power game, which is well into what is called the power theory of international relations.
Now basically, there are two traditions as regards Kautilya: one argues that Kautilya is a saint who later became a minister and helped Chandaragupta Maurya to found the Maurya Empire. And when Megasthenes(3) visited India, he had retired from Pataliputra, the capital of the Maurya Empire. Kautilya’s theory had a lot of influence on the succeeding empires in the history of India, the Gupta empire and later on to modern times, the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] government [which has been ruling since 2014] also, undertook extensive studies of Kautliya to see how they can be used in modern military affairs and present-day international relations.
But, the internal evidence of the Arthaśhāstra, Kautilya’s magnum opus (which has 15 chapters of which six are very important) points to the fact that they [the six important chapters] are written at a certain period of time, when the Maurya Empire was founded, in the 3rd Century BCE, and they have the stamp of a single author.
So, we can say that the core of the Arthaśhāstra was prepared by one person, Chanakya or Vishnugupta, whom we call kutila or Kautilya.
Panchatantra [exact date is unknown but between the 2nd Century BCE and 5th Century CE], was also influenced by Kautilya. The Panchatantra went from India to the Islamic caliphate through the channel of Muslim invasion, and also influenced Aesop’s Fables of Europe. So, Kautilya was ,as famous, if not more, like Sun Tzu, or Clausewitz(5). But very few in the Western world know about him, because Sanskrit is very difficult, and old Sanskrit is very difficult to decipher and read, and there are many different transcripts of Kautilya.
Royal United Services Institute
Kautilya lived in India from 375 to 283 BC. He ranks alongside Sun Tzu as one of the great early sages who wrote about the relations between polities, and thus also about wars between them. Kaushik Roy, Guru Nanak Chair Professor at Jadavpur University, India, joins Beatrice and Paul to discuss his work.
Play the episode
Read the transcript
Episode 5: Kautilya: India’s Forerunner to Machiavelli?
with Professor Kaushik Roy
Beatrice Heuser: Thank you Paul and hello from Hamburg.
Kautilya who lived in India from 375 to 283 BCE, ranks with Sunzi as one of the great early sages who wrote about the relations between polities and thus also about the wars between them. His main oeuvre is the Arthaśhāstra. Somewhat confusingly, he is also referred to as Chanakaya Vishnugupta. But let us stick to Kautilya here. Kautilya was advisor to two successive emperors of the Maurya Empire in India. Indeed, if I understand it correctly, he helped the first of them ascend to the throne. He is thus, not only a theoretician, but also had political influence.
Kaushik Roy is Guru Nanak Chair Professor in the Department of History, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. He is also a Global Fellow at Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO), Norway. He has been attached to this Institute in different capacities for about a decade. At present, he is engaged in PRIO’s ‘Warring with Machines’ project. Previously, he has taught at Visva Bharati University at Santiniketan, West Bengal India and also at Presidents College, Kolkata, India. He obtained his PhD from the Centre for Historical Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has worked extensively on the wars of pre-modern, early modern and present eras.
He is a prolific author, and his publications include: A Global History of Modern Insurgencies and Counterinsurgencies [Routledge, 2022]: Battle for Malaya: The Indian Army in Defeat, 1941–1942 (Indiana University Press, 2019): Hinduism and the Ethics of Warfare in South Asia: From Antiquity to the Present (Cambridge University Press, 2012), and Brown Warriors of the Raj: on the Recruitment and Command in the Sepoy Army, 1859-1913 (Manohar, 2008).
Dr. Roy, Kautilya suggests that one should cultivate an “enemy’s rear-enemy”, in other words, make friends with your enemy’s enemy.(1)Kautilya is, therefore, often described as a “Realist”, i.e., somebody taking the most cynical view of international relations. What polities were there on the Indian Subcontinent, and were relations between them really that ruthlessly inimical?
Kaushik Roy: Okay. Now, Kautilya, his name comes from [the Sanskrit word] kutila, which means “the evil one.” So, there is an argument one can make that he is the
father of “Realist” philosophy in international relations. I mean if his operating range could be taken as the 3rd Century BCE, then he predates Machiavelli by quite a long time.(2) Kautliya also speaks of the power game, which is well into what is called the power theory of international relations.
Now basically, there are two traditions as regards Kautilya: one argues that Kautilya is a saint who later became a minister and helped Chandaragupta Maurya to found the Maurya Empire. And when Megasthenes(3) visited India, he had retired from Pataliputra, the capital of the Maurya Empire. Kautilya’s theory had a lot of influence on the succeeding empires in the history of India, the Gupta empire and later on to modern times, the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] government [which has been ruling since 2014] also, undertook extensive studies of Kautliya to see how they can be used in modern military affairs and present-day international relations.
On the other hand, there is the other argument that Kautilya is a mythical person, and actually there is a corpus of political thought which evolved gradually in ancient India and given the name of Kautilya. We also know that such a debate also exists about Sunzi, whether he was a historical person or not a historical person.(4)But, the internal evidence of the Arthaśhāstra, Kautilya’s magnum opus (which has 15 chapters of which six are very important) points to the fact that they [the six important chapters] are written at a certain period of time, when the Maurya Empire was founded, in the 3rd Century BCE, and they have the stamp of a single author.
So, we can say that the core of the Arthaśhāstra was prepared by one person, Chanakya or Vishnugupta, whom we call kutila or Kautilya.
In fact, the Panchatantra [exact date is unknown but between the 2nd Century BCE and 5th Century CE], was also influenced by Kautilya. The Panchatantra went from India to the Islamic caliphate through the channel of Muslim invasion, and also influenced Aesop’s Fables of Europe. So, Kautilya was ,as famous, if not more, like Sun Tzu, or Clausewitz(5). But very few in the Western world know about him, because Sanskrit is very difficult, and old Sanskrit is very difficult to decipher and read, and there are many different transcripts of Kautilya.
Beatrice Heuser: You did say you thought he had an influence not only on the Arab world but also on Europe. So, if it was not the manuscripts themselves that were legible, how/when did it reach Europe for the first time?
Kaushik Roy: It reached Europe in the 19th Century. What I am saying is that Kautilya’s work, the Arthaśhāstra, influenced the Panchatantra, which influenced Islamic West Asia. It also influenced what you call Aesop’s Fables. In that indirect way we can trace it, but the trajectory of the history of ideas is very murky. But basically, the Arthaśhāstra, deals with what Kautilya categorises as the modern terminology of the grand strategist. So, the Arthaśhāstra, deals with several layers. One is the grand strategy. Another is military strategy. And third he deals with tactics.
Now about grand strategy, Kautilya says that policy, niti or rashtraniti, (state policy), is an amalgamation of politics, finance, diplomacy, and military. In other words, the military represents force in Hinduism or in Sanskrit, danda, now that comes last. So, first politics, then you have foreign policy, then you have finance, and finally you have the military
At the grand strategic level, Kautilya says, somewhat similar to that of Sunzi, first resort to diplomacy, if necessary, armed diplomacy, deterrence, coercion. Only if all of this fails, then you use force. But Kautilya warns that use of force is anitya, uncertain, is dangerous. It is not certain what that strategic output will be. So, Kautilya advises the vijigishu (the would-be ruler or emperor) that the use of brute force always results in strategic bankruptcy.
Now, in Kautilya’s format, there are three types of war: Conventional war; Unconventional war, that is insurgency, and finally; Limited war. In conventional war, he says that the aim is to smash the enemy, and that is dangerous. Better to fight a limited war, grab some territories, make him subordinate to the hegemonic ruler, and then establish alliances, multiple alliances, with other states to create a hegemonic empire.
Now Kautilya also speaks of unconventional war, to assassinate kings, use poison, use spies. In fact, Kautilya can be called a spy master: single spies, double spies, triple spies, they all are in the arsenal of Kautilya’s Arthaśhāstra for how to conduct unconventional war
Beatrice Heuser: I found it very interesting just how Kautilya is interested in ruses and espionage, but also in agents of influence. And there seem to be quite a lot of sections when he attributes to women all the roles of subversion and creating quarrels between different leaders by insinuating that one of them was making unchaste proposals to them, et cetera. So apparently he had armies of women spies and agents of influence.(6)
Kaushik Roy: I know Kautilya, like other Brahmans, did not suffer from so-called gender bias. He said men and women could be used in tandem for conducting unconventional warfare. Kautilya says, that there should be spies in the shape of mendicants, religious leaders. There should spies in the form of traders, there should female spies.
There are two types of female spies. One is those who are young and beautiful, who will try to get close to the foreign power’s leadership, and try to extract information from them or try to assassinate them, poison them or force them, encourage them to change alliances. And also killer spies, both male and female. There is another type of spies, who are not merely tactical, but Kautilya said they would deal with strategic and operational issues; they are bhikshus - female mendicants - stationed in particular areas of the foreign territories for quite a long time and try to interact with the people of foreign territories and gather information about the conditions of the foreign countries: their economic conditions; their political conditions; what the people are thinking. And, Kautilya also says that they should be used to spread misinformation and disinformation.
Beatrice Heuser: So really, all the hybrid warfare thinking goes back to Kautilya if not even earlier.
Paul O’Neill: It is interesting to see how we are getting the diplomatic, the information, the military and the economic levers of power in Kautilya's work, even in the 3rd Century BCE.
His tenure covers quite a lot of different kinds of state. He starts off, I think, where India is resisting the armies of Alexander [the Great]. So, there is a resistance element. He then seeks to overthrow the Nanda dynasty. Then build an empire, the Maurya Empire. And then of course there comes the point at which you have the Mauryan Empire and the Seleucid Empire that have to come to an accommodation. How does he change his approach, or his theories about the kind of warfare, the kind of state security apparatus needed to manage those different types of state?
Royal United Services Institute
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Episode 5: Kautilya: India’s Forerunner to Machiavelli?
Beatrice Heuser and Paul O’Neill
7 March 2023
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Kautilya lived in India from 375 to 283 BC. He ranks alongside Sun Tzu as one of the great early sages who wrote about the relations between polities, and thus also about wars between them. Kaushik Roy, Guru Nanak Chair Professor at Jadavpur University, India, joins Beatrice and Paul to discuss his work.
Play the episode
Read the transcript
Episode 5: Kautilya: India’s Forerunner to Machiavelli?
with Professor Kaushik Roy
Beatrice Heuser: Thank you Paul and hello from Hamburg.
Kautilya who lived in India from 375 to 283 BCE, ranks with Sunzi as one of the great early sages who wrote about the relations between polities and thus also about the wars between them. His main oeuvre is the Arthaśhāstra. Somewhat confusingly, he is also referred to as Chanakaya Vishnugupta. But let us stick to Kautilya here. Kautilya was advisor to two successive emperors of the Maurya Empire in India. Indeed, if I understand it correctly, he helped the first of them ascend to the throne. He is thus, not only a theoretician, but also had political influence.
Kaushik Roy is Guru Nanak Chair Professor in the Department of History, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. He is also a Global Fellow at Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO), Norway. He has been attached to this Institute in different capacities for about a decade. At present, he is engaged in PRIO’s ‘Warring with Machines’ project. Previously, he has taught at Visva Bharati University at Santiniketan, West Bengal India and also at Presidents College, Kolkata, India. He obtained his PhD from the Centre for Historical Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has worked extensively on the wars of pre-modern, early modern and present eras.
He is a prolific author, and his publications include: A Global History of Modern Insurgencies and Counterinsurgencies [Routledge, 2022]: Battle for Malaya: The Indian Army in Defeat, 1941–1942 (Indiana University Press, 2019): Hinduism and the Ethics of Warfare in South Asia: From Antiquity to the Present (Cambridge University Press, 2012), and Brown Warriors of the Raj: on the Recruitment and Command in the Sepoy Army, 1859-1913 (Manohar, 2008).
Dr. Roy, Kautilya suggests that one should cultivate an “enemy’s rear-enemy”, in other words, make friends with your enemy’s enemy.(1)Kautilya is, therefore, often described as a “Realist”, i.e., somebody taking the most cynical view of international relations. What polities were there on the Indian Subcontinent, and were relations between them really that ruthlessly inimical?
Kaushik Roy: Okay. Now, Kautilya, his name comes from [the Sanskrit word] kutila, which means “the evil one.” So, there is an argument one can make that he is the father of “Realist” philosophy in international relations. I mean if his operating range could be taken as the 3rd Century BCE, then he predates Machiavelli by quite a long time.(2) Kautliya also speaks of the power game, which is well into what is called the power theory of international relations.
Now basically, there are two traditions as regards Kautilya: one argues that Kautilya is a saint who later became a minister and helped Chandaragupta Maurya to found the Maurya Empire. And when Megasthenes(3) visited India, he had retired from Pataliputra, the capital of the Maurya Empire. Kautilya’s theory had a lot of influence on the succeeding empires in the history of India, the Gupta empire and later on to modern times, the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] government [which has been ruling since 2014] also, undertook extensive studies of Kautliya to see how they can be used in modern military affairs and present-day international relations.
On the other hand, there is the other argument that Kautilya is a mythical person, and actually there is a corpus of political thought which evolved gradually in ancient India and given the name of Kautilya. We also know that such a debate also exists about Sunzi, whether he was a historical person or not a historical person.(4)But, the internal evidence of the Arthaśhāstra, Kautilya’s magnum opus (which has 15 chapters of which six are very important) points to the fact that they [the six important chapters] are written at a certain period of time, when the Maurya Empire was founded, in the 3rd Century BCE, and they have the stamp of a single author.
So, we can say that the core of the Arthaśhāstra was prepared by one person, Chanakya or Vishnugupta, whom we call kutila or Kautilya.
In fact, the Panchatantra [exact date is unknown but between the 2nd Century BCE and 5th Century CE], was also influenced by Kautilya. The Panchatantra went from India to the Islamic caliphate through the channel of Muslim invasion, and also influenced Aesop’s Fables of Europe. So, Kautilya was ,as famous, if not more, like Sun Tzu, or Clausewitz(5). But very few in the Western world know about him, because Sanskrit is very difficult, and old Sanskrit is very difficult to decipher and read, and there are many different transcripts of Kautilya.
Beatrice Heuser: You did say you thought he had an influence not only on the Arab world but also on Europe. So, if it was not the manuscripts themselves that were legible, how/when did it reach Europe for the first time?
Kaushik Roy: It reached Europe in the 19th Century. What I am saying is that Kautilya’s work, the Arthaśhāstra, influenced the Panchatantra, which influenced Islamic West Asia. It also influenced what you call Aesop’s Fables. In that indirect way we can trace it, but the trajectory of the history of ideas is very murky. But basically, the Arthaśhāstra, deals with what Kautilya categorises as the modern terminology of the grand strategist. So, the Arthaśhāstra, deals with several layers. One is the grand strategy. Another is military strategy. And third he deals with tactics.
Now about grand strategy, Kautilya says that policy, niti or rashtraniti, (state policy), is an amalgamation of politics, finance, diplomacy, and military. In other words, the military represents force in Hinduism or in Sanskrit, danda, now that comes last. So, first politics, then you have foreign policy, then you have finance, and finally you have the military
At the grand strategic level, Kautilya says, somewhat similar to that of Sunzi, first resort to diplomacy, if necessary, armed diplomacy, deterrence, coercion. Only if all of this fails, then you use force. But Kautilya warns that use of force is anitya, uncertain, is dangerous. It is not certain what that strategic output will be. So, Kautilya advises the vijigishu (the would-be ruler or emperor) that the use of brute force always results in strategic bankruptcy.
Now, in Kautilya’s format, there are three types of war: Conventional war; Unconventional war, that is insurgency, and finally; Limited war. In conventional war, he says that the aim is to smash the enemy, and that is dangerous. Better to fight a limited war, grab some territories, make him subordinate to the hegemonic ruler, and then establish alliances, multiple alliances, with other states to create a hegemonic empire.
Now Kautilya also speaks of unconventional war, to assassinate kings, use poison, use spies. In fact, Kautilya can be called a spy master: single spies, double spies, triple spies, they all are in the arsenal of Kautilya’s Arthaśhāstra for how to conduct unconventional war.
Beatrice Heuser: I found it very interesting just how Kautilya is interested in ruses and espionage, but also in agents of influence. And there seem to be quite a lot of sections when he attributes to women all the roles of subversion and creating quarrels between different leaders by insinuating that one of them was making unchaste proposals to them, et cetera. So apparently he had armies of women spies and agents of influence.(6)
Kaushik Roy: I know Kautilya, like other Brahmans, did not suffer from so-called gender bias. He said men and women could be used in tandem for conducting unconventional warfare. Kautilya says, that there should be spies in the shape of mendicants, religious leaders. There should spies in the form of traders, there should female spies.
There are two types of female spies. One is those who are young and beautiful, who will try to get close to the foreign power’s leadership, and try to extract information from them or try to assassinate them, poison them or force them, encourage them to change alliances. And also killer spies, both male and female. There is another type of spies, who are not merely tactical, but Kautilya said they would deal with strategic and operational issues; they are bhikshus - female mendicants - stationed in particular areas of the foreign territories for quite a long time and try to interact with the people of foreign territories and gather information about the conditions of the foreign countries: their economic conditions; their political conditions; what the people are thinking. And, Kautilya also says that they should be used to spread misinformation and disinformation.
Beatrice Heuser: So really, all the hybrid warfare thinking goes back to Kautilya if not even earlier.
Paul O’Neill: It is interesting to see how we are getting the diplomatic, the information, the military and the economic levers of power in Kautilya's work, even in the 3rd Century BCE.
His tenure covers quite a lot of different kinds of state. He starts off, I think, where India is resisting the armies of Alexander [the Great]. So, there is a resistance element. He then seeks to overthrow the Nanda dynasty. Then build an empire, the Maurya Empire. And then of course there comes the point at which you have the Mauryan Empire and the Seleucid Empire that have to come to an accommodation. How does he change his approach, or his theories about the kind of warfare, the kind of state security apparatus needed to manage those different types of state?
Kaushik Roy: There are two books. One is the book on thoughts (diplomacy). And another book is on conventional warfare. Or you might say that these books are really chapters [of the Arthaśhāstra]. First, I will take the military aspect, and then I will deal with the broader political aspects and the diplomatic aspect.
About the military aspects, Kautilya says first take up the issue of the army. initially the Indians before 500 BCE used to fight only with infantry (paiks), and hastis (elephants). But the Macedonian invasion showed the importance of cavalry. Paurava (or Porus) was defeated at the Battle of Hydaspes by the Companion Cavalry [of Alexander III], and especially the role played by the Central Asian horse-archers who were employed by Alexander, whom he had hired after defeating the satraps of Bactria and Sogdiana. So, Kautilya says that the twofold army - infantry and elephants - should be changed to a fourfold army. And the other two branches would be: one, cavalry, and second, more important, chariots.
Now about cavalry, he emphasizes training. What is more important, Kautilya talks about combined training of even small units. That a composite unit should include some infantry soldiers, some chariots, some elephants and of course some cavalry. The other important element which Kautilya introduces is the strategic role played by forts. Kautilya says if the army is defeated and is withdrawn, then there should be strong forts, not in the interior of the country, but at the borders.
Kautilya lived in India from 375 to 283 BC. He ranks alongside Sun Tzu as one of the great early sages who wrote about the relations between polities, and thus also about wars between them. Kaushik Roy, Guru Nanak Chair Professor at Jadavpur University, India, joins Beatrice and Paul to discuss...
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