208 NOTES TO PAGES 96-103
pandit gave Dr. R. Shamasastry the full text of Arthasastra, written on palm
leaves in the Grantha script. Shamasastry published the text in 1909, and an
English translation followed in 1915. It was then that the text entered philo-
logical inquiry. As well, the process of inquiry that established th~ text as
"native" political theory and the establishment of its putative' author
Canakya as an "Indian" political philosopher speaking to a Brahminical
Indian king. Arthasastra contains 15 books, comprising 150 chapters, with
roughly 6,000 verses in total. The first five books deal with the training of
the king and his daily routines, administrators, laws, crime, taxation, sala-
ries, etc. In other words, the books deal with the domestic affairs of the
bureaucracy. Books seven through thirteen focus on foreign policy, diplo-
macy, war, conquest, and governance over the conquered. The last books
deal with occult and philosophic practices. See L. N. Rangarajan, The Ar-
thashastra (Delhi: Penguin Books, 1992), pp. n4-n5.
- Prathama Banerjee's reading of Arthasastra as a colonial text which is in-
voked as political theory is apt and is important if we are to understand the
afterlife of this text. See Prathama Banerjee, "Chanakya/Kautilya: History,
Philosophy, Theater and the Twentieth-Century Political," History of the
Present, vol. 2, no. 1 (spring 2012), pp. 24-51.
- Rangarajan, The Arthashastra, pp. 2, 10, 47.
- The king, Arthasastra states, is from noble birth, has intellect, is willing to
learn, is brave and resourceful, is eloquent and bold, is well trained in arts
anct governance, is sweet in speech, and is without passion, anger, greed, and
fickleness. Most importantly, the king :,ihould follow the advice of his coun-
selor. The advisor should be of the highest rank, a native of the land, trained
in all arts and logics, and able to provide governance guidance to the king.
"Only a king who is wise, disciplined, devoted to a just governing of the sub-
jects and ever conscious of the welfare of all beings will enjoy the earth
unopposed." See Rangarajan, The Arthashastra, p. 143.
- Yigal Bronner, "Review of The Bawd's Counsel: Being an Eighth-Century
Verse Novel in Sanskrit by Dii.modaragupta, ed. and transl., Csaba Dezso and
Dominic Goodall," Inda-Iranian fournal 58, no. 1 (2015), pp. 79-86.
- A. Venkatasubbiah, "Pancatantra Studies," Annals of the Bhandarkar Ori-
ental Research Institute, vol. 15, no. 1/2 (1933-34), pp. 39-66.
-41. See Patrick Olivelle, Pancatantra: The Book of India's Folk Wisdom (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 120-122.
- Fathnama, p. 45.
4. A DEMON WITH RUBY EYES
I. For an overview of conversion accounts, see Simon Digby, "Anecdotes of a
Provincial Sufi of the Delhi Sultanate, Khwaja Gurg of Kara," Iran 32 (1994),
pp. 99-109. Digby argues that narratives conversion are split in two broad
frameworks: the individual who converts after a personal encounter with the
divine, and the civic community in a particular space (village, neighborhood,
etc.) that converts after witnessing a display of his miraculous powers
(karamii.t), often in contention with a rival. Contemporary histories of con-
version to Islam focus on specific regions. They take textual data and aug-
