bhAShya

Source: TW

Certain white indologists have interpreted the structural similarity between the kauTilIya arthashAstra & the kAmasUtra as evidence for the latter being modeled after the former. They also want to see both as gupta era texts. We see that as a tenuous claim. While both texts were redacted multiple times after their original composition, their core material is essentially that of their original composers. We believe they simply represent text lying at the junction of the older sutra & new classical era.

The older sUtra-s going back to the gR^ihya & shrauta texts of that genre were primarily composed for memorization & were expanded by the student using the oral commentaries received during his training. Some of those commentaries from a later age were written down. By the end of the sUtra period writing was more in vogue even for technical works. Hence, the extreme economy of the older sUtra-s was no longer needed & the sUtra-like material was presented in a more relaxed form – this is the style of the sUtra-like parts of both the arthashAstra of kauTilya & kAmasUtra.

These were followed or interspersed with metrical verses, which now took on the weight of the memorized component. Thus, the stylistic similarity of the arthashAstra & kAmasUtra indeed suggest that they are texts from the same time window but their originals were composed well before the gupta age. One of the colophons of the arthashAstra says:

svayam eva viShNuguptash chakAra sUtraM cha bhAShyaM cha |

Given the stylistic similarity between the kAmasUtra & the arthashAstra one could say that at least the prose material was from the original “sUtra” composition of viShNugupta.

Now what was the bhAShya? It doesn’t seem like any of the material of the arthashAstra, as it survives, is an autocommentary. Hence, it is possible that the original commentary it came with has been entirely lost or influenced the redaction & was partly included in versified form.

Many years ago, I had seen a text called the chANakya-TIka published by Datar & the chANakya-sUtra published by Gairola. While these need more study, the former doesn’t seem to be a later commentary – it could have been inspired by the original viShNugupta bhAShya.

The sUtra-s of chANakya on the other hand seem to be a later collations of sUtra-s attributed to chANakya. It remains unclear if any of these originally went with the kauTilIya text.