Building an Empire: Chanakya Revisited

Likened to Machiavelli by political theorists, Chanakya wrote the Arthashastra almost two thousand years before Niccolo Machiavelli was born. Written in Sanskrit, the Arthashastra remains unique in all of Indian literature because of its unabashed advocacy of realpolitik. The Arthashastra does not leave any doubts about its ends: according to Chanakya, a ruler should use any means to attain his goal and his actions required no moral sanction. The only problems discussed in the Arthashastra are of the most practical kind. It was with Chanakya as his mentor, that Chandragupta Maurya came to rule much of India.