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Book No. – 8 (Political Science)
Book Name – Indian Political Thought (Himanshu Roy/ M.P. Singh)
What’s Inside the Chapter? (After Subscription)
1. Introduction
2. The Kautilya Text
2.1. The Social Structure
2.2. The Economy
3. The Saptang Theory of State
3.1. Departments of Government
3.2. A Centralized State?
4. The Theory of Rajamandala (The Circle of States)
5. Conclusion
6. Practice Question & MCQs
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LANGUAGE
Kautilya: Theory of State
Chapter – 2
Table of Contents
Introduction
- Renewed interest in Indian philosophy and political thought occurred during and after the Indian Renaissance in British India.
- Initial rediscoveries of Indian thought flowed into four channels:
- Orientalist-Indological
- Nationalist
- Idealist-philosophical
- Pluralist-philosophical
- Orientalism made pioneering discoveries of ancient Indian traditions and projected them as distinct from Western traditions.
- Nationalists focused on bringing to light ancient Indian concerns with political ideas, institutions, systems of law, and transcendent national identities beyond tribe, caste, and ethnicity.
- K.P. Jayaswal’s Hindu Polity was a representation of nationalist thought, highlighting ancient India’s democratic ideas and institutions.
- Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan was a key figure in restating Shankara’s non-dualist metaphysics (advait), a cornerstone of Indian idealist philosophy.
- Shankara’s metaphysical monism rejects the duality of Brahman and atman, and considers the material world illusory.
- Philosophical pluralism is promoted by the Sankhya school.
- Surendra Nath Dasgupta’s History of Indian Philosophy is an example of concern with the pluralist-philosophicalsystem.
- The overarching theme of these works was that Indian philosophy and thought were seen as religious and society-centered, rather than focused on material life, political life, logic, and epistemology.
- It took longer for scholars to establish that ancient Indian thought was concerned with theories of knowledge and state/government theories, alongside metaphysics.
- Tsherbatsky and Bimal Krishna Matilal pioneered research in ancient Indian epistemology.
- Political theories on the origin of state in Vedic, Buddhist texts, and treatises by Kautilya, Manu, Kamandaka, were brought to light by textual scholars, historians, and in combination with archeology and epigraphy.