
Chanakya: India's Machiavelli - fitzwatermellow
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/chanakya-indias-truly-radical-machiavelli-12146
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jane_is_here
He was far more effective and far more successful than Machiavelli.

He selected Chandragupta to destroy the Nanda dynasty and used him to create
the Maurya empire. The Mauryas ruled the largest empire ever in the Indian
subcontinent. Ashoka, the third to rule the empire was responsible for the
global transmission of Buddhism.

He was also far more vindictive than Machiavelli.

"It is also told that once, the thorns of a bush hurt Chankya's feet while he
was passing through a forest. The wily Brahmin was cut to the quick, and
wanted revenge. He got his revenge by pouring sugar syrup into the roots of
the bush, thus ensuring that the ants ate up the root and destroyed the bush."

His main philosophy was "A debt should be paid off till the last penny; An
enemy should be destroyed without a trace".

~~~
mitchtbaum
> He was also far more vindictive than Machiavelli.

> "It is also told that once, the thorns of a bush hurt Chankya's feet while
> he was passing through a forest. The wily Brahmin was cut to the quick, and
> wanted revenge. He got his revenge by pouring sugar syrup into the roots of
> the bush, thus ensuring that the ants ate up the root and destroyed the
> bush."

This seems wrongly interpreted on two levels. Processing sugarcane, while
first occurring in India, happened about six centuries later [0]. That's
hardly important, just that this legend, as people also tell it with milk[1],
makes much more sense, allegorically.

As a metaphor, considering that it was while he did this that Chandragupta
first saw Chanakya, and that together they united a bountiful, resilient
people to overthrow a tyrant, we start to see his character. This legend also
seems to show how forces of Nature bring people together in mystical ways that
work to fix mistakes, ie, Chanakya avenging his father's murder by an
extortionist king[2] with help from noble kings.

0:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sugar#Early_use_of_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sugar#Early_use_of_sugarcane_in_India)

1:
[http://bhojpuria.com/people/chankya.php](http://bhojpuria.com/people/chankya.php)

2:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanda_Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanda_Empire)

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bdsatish
This is what I call the "X-of-Y syndrome" where:

* X is Western

* Y is Indian

* but Y is earlier than X

In this case X = Machiavelli, Y = Chanakya.

I've seen this trend especially among writers of the Western world. Reminds me
of "Ahmedabad is the Manchester of India" even though cotton was mass-produced
in India since the dawn of civilization.

~~~
galtwho
or how about Shewag is India's Warner :)

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linux_devil
Considering the time when arthashastra was written , I think it will be better
to say : Machiavelli: Italy's Chanakya

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walterbell
Is there a well-regarded complete translation? I found an introductory
translation of selected writings from the 15-volume source, _" Maxims Of
Chanakya_", by V.K. Subramanian, [http://www.amazon.com/Maxims-Chanakya-V-K-
Subramanian-ebook/...](http://www.amazon.com/Maxims-Chanakya-V-K-Subramanian-
ebook/dp/B00793748C/)

~~~
aneeshm
I don't know whether it's well-regarded; I do however highly recommend the
translation-cum-rearrangement by Rangarajan:
[http://www.amazon.com/Arthashastra-Penguin-classics-
Kautilya...](http://www.amazon.com/Arthashastra-Penguin-classics-
Kautilya/dp/0140446036/) (I've read it myself, and found it quite good.)

(He's re-arranged it to be coherent for a modern reader; one reason for this
is because the original was meant to be memorised and perhaps used from
memory, and was ordered accordingly.)

~~~
emilga
> (He's re-arranged it to be coherent for a modern reader; one reason for this
> is because the original was meant to be memorised and perhaps used from
> memory, and was ordered accordingly.)

Interesting. Can you comment on how the original was arranged to facilitate
memorization?

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m52go
This is great! I've added Arthashastra to Canon of Man.

[http://canonofman.com/item/7rJtzB3dWPkQHAK28](http://canonofman.com/item/7rJtzB3dWPkQHAK28)

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riteshkpr
Nice, well written.

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bobosha
Interesting that they call someone who preceded Machiavelli by millenia as
India's Machiavelli. Machiavelli is Italy's Chanakya.

~~~
whistlerbrk
Let's not do that.

The article is 1) written for a western audience 2) I'm willing to bet that
Machiavelli is MUCH more well known by political scholars than Chanakya

~~~
x5n1
OP has a point. If you come 1,000 years before your ideas are more original
than someone who comes 1,000 years after you.

~~~
barry-cotter
Originality is a function of putting together old ideas in new ways or of
having a completely new idea, however you distinguish between the two.
Machiavelli was completely unaware of Chanakya. The paradigm in which he
worked was the Mirror of Princes, which were not marked by Machiavelli's
realism.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirrors_for_princes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirrors_for_princes)

Machiavelli's "The Prince" was a break from a tradition which assumed that
what was moral for a ruler was what was moral for an individual, just at a
larger scale. As manuals for statecraft, instructions for how to achieve the
goals of state it is far superior to the works that preceded it in the Western
European tradition.

If you want to read more Machiavelli after "The Prince" try the Discourses on
Livy, often considered the greater work, and definitely closer to
Machiavelli's own republican personal leanings.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli#Disco...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli#Discourses_on_Livy)

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bakul
This is like saying "Gandhi: India's true Martin Luther King".

~~~
roel_v
Who's Gandhi? _ducks_

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TheMagicHorsey
The link has waaaaay too many ads. Almost unreadable if you don't run an ad
blocker. The content provider should consider a more tasteful, smaller ad
footprint. It might even increase ad engagement.

