Artha-Shastra is the science of artha, or material
prosperity, which is one of the four goals of human life.
By artha, Kautilya meant "the means of subsistence of
man," which is, primarily, wealth and, secondarily, land on the earth, and
thirdly the expertise of people in various fields. Fourth is protection and
encouragement of the art,expertise and interest of the subjects.
Work is concerned with the means of fruitfully maintaining
and using, developing country’s land to
its maximum yield. Artha-Shahstra is a work on politics and diplomacy, theory
of kingship and statecraft.
Though Kautilya recognized that sovereignty may belong to
the Ruling Clan, he was himself concerned with monarchs and monarchies. He
advocated the idea of the king's divine nature, or divine sanction of the
king's office, but he also attempted to reconcile it with a theory of the
elective origin of the king. He referred to a state of nature, without king, as
an anarchy in which the stronger devours the weaker.
According to Kautilya, the King has four important functions
to perform.
The four functions of the King are to acquire what is not gained, to
protect what is gained, to increase what is protected, and to bestow the
surplus upon the deserving. The political organization is held to have seven
elements. It is a group of the king, the
minister, the territory, the fort, the treasury, the army, and the ally. These
are viewed as being organically related.
The three "powers" of the king are power of good
counsel, the majesty of the king himself, and the power to inspire. The priest
is not made an element of the state organization. The king, however, is not
exempt from the laws of dharma. Being the "promulgator of dharma,"
the king should himself be free from the six passions of sex, anger, greed,
vanity, haughtiness, and overjoy. What Kautilya advocated was an enlightened
and ideal monarch pattern.
The Atharvaveda stands apart from other Vedic texts.
It contains both hymns and prose passages and is divided into 20 books. Books
1-7 contain magical prayers for precise purposes: spells for a long life,
cures, curses, love charms, prayers for prosperity, charms for kingship and
Brahmanhood, and expiations for evil committed. They reflect the
magical-religious concerns of everyday life and are on a different level than
the Rigveda, which glorifies the great gods and their liturgy. Books 8-12
contain similar texts but also include cosmological hymns that continue those
of the Rigveda and provide a transition to the more complex speculations of the
Upanishads. Books 13-20 celebrate the cosmic principle (book 13) and present
marriage prayers (book 14), funeral formulas (book 18), and other magical and
ritual formulas. This text is an extremely important source of knowledge of
practical religion and magic, particularly where it complements the one-sided
picture of the Rigveda. Many rites are also laid down in the
"Kaushikasutra" (manual of the Kaushika family of priests) of the
Atharvaveda
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