Learning From Chanakya: Methods Of The Artist-Spies By Sumedha Verma Ojha

Snapshot

• The Arthashastra mentions using artists as spies to target another state. In current times, this can be compared to the ‘Fifth Column’, any group of people that undermines a larger group such as a nation through overt or clandestine activities. Rings a bell?

Continuing the series of extracts from the Arthashastra, this article, with a 2300 year old prism, firmly that of national interest, will look at the role of the entertainment industry in times of peace, hostility and outright war.

Having stipulated the fact that today’s modern limitless, boundary less, instant overload of entertainment and infotainment delivered through multiple devices is very different from the sources of entertainment millennia ago, it must be understood that it is the underlying principles and similarities which will be considered.

This column has referred to the extensive spy system mandated by the Arthashastra to maintain peace, law and order internally; and the use of clandestine services to create confusion within enemies and win wars against them.

This system was very much a part of the Mauryan empire. The spy service was under the administrative control of the ‘Samaharta’, a high ranking minister of the kingdom who combined the roles of finance minister and home minister with the specific responsibility of the secret service.
The secret service functioned internally, collecting information of financial malfeasance, treason, sedition and revolt against the king. It also functioned in enemy countries to spread confusion, dissension and misinformation and prepare the ground for the enemy’s defeat, the upaya of ‘bheda’ explained in an earlier article.

The secret service was divided into ‘sanstha’ or headquarters type (five categories) who remained stationed at a place and the ‘sanchara’ type (4 categories) who moved around and collected information or provided other ‘services’.

The secret agents were everywhere, both internally and externally; inside houses, in the city, in the countryside, forests, frontiers etc. They adopted a cover which was appropriate to the circumstances; 29 different types with 50 subtypes of covers have been mentioned in the Arthashastra. As a mark of Chanakya’s precision, the exact cover to be used is specified in more than a hundred places in the text.

Of special interest for the moment is the category of entertainers and artists who are to be used both internally and externally as spies, a part of the entertainment industry of the times, so to speak.
A common form of entertainment during Mauryan times was the ‘preksha’ or show on stage where performers included both men and women. Since, ‘nritta’, ‘natya’, ‘gita’ and ‘vadya’ or dancing, acting, singing and playing musical instruments were all popular; ‘natas’ or actors, ‘nartakas’ or dancers, ‘gayakas’ and ‘vadakas’ or singers and instrumentalists were correspondingly popular. Recitation or ‘pathya’ was also popular. The word ‘kusilava’ is used as a general term for actors, dancers, mimes and similar artists.

In the cities these shows took place in specially constructed theatre houses ( precisely described in Bharata’s Natyshastra,) which were grand and opulent centres for high society. Prominent citizens or guilds built these as offerings for the public or for the king and attending these prekshas was a mark of prestige. This definitely has echoes in modern musical, film and theatre performances albeit at a smaller scale.

The countryside was not left out, temporary structures for these performances were built for the performances (with rules stipulated in the Arthashastra). The entire village had to pay for these structures and all could then witness the show, so these were very much popular community activities.

There were also those who performed without structures, the jugglers, storytellers, wandering minstrels etc and were extremely popular.

Apart form the performing arts there were those who made ‘chitras’, i.e. painters, and those who wrote; writers, playwrights, poets in Sanskrit and Prakrit were a respected part of society. Writing, the act of it itself was then an art, too, not mere typing as today.

In the Arthashastra, a special community called ‘Kaushikas’ devoted to art and music is mentioned which was employed at royal courts and especially in enemy countries to spread disinformation and create dissension and confusion.

Having established that entertainers and the entertainment industry had a strong presence in Chanakya’s Jambudwipa and that this was a category specially mentioned as one from which spies were to be drawn let me introduce another concept here, a slightly more modern one which is relevant today and also has echoes in the Arthashastra, the Fifth Column.

A Fifth Column is any group of people that undermines a larger group such as a nation through overt or clandestine activities. This phrase originated during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s but found fame during the Second World War especially during the fall of France when people inside the country were said to have worked for the Nazis before the occupying force took over the country.

Back to the Arthashastra; the method of using ‘bheda’ is nothing but the creation of confusion, anxiety dissension and disunity in the targeted state through what could be construed as a Fifth Column consisting mainly of secret agents ad a significant part of these secret agents were from the entertainment sector, the enemy within which is the most difficult to counter. The Kautilyan Fifth Column.

As Chanakya had recognised those many many years ago, it is the power of this entertainment industry, its spread, ubiquity, goodwill and the love of the people enjoyed by it which makes it uniquely successful in reaching hearts and swaying minds. If the influential and successful members of this industry create dissension, consensus and a united front are the first casualties.

Article courtesy: https://swarajyamag.com/culture/learning-from-chanakya-methods-of-the-artist-spies?fbclid=IwAR2nWAvTeSpnXNNBZ1F-HfkRmhvS-VFfqSMHwER9TvGB8v49CK2dkWuMMdo
 

Extracts From The Arthashastra: A Mauryan Budget by Sumedha Verma Ojha

Snapshot

• In the Mauryan ‘budget’, the budget and accounts were to be prepared annually, with the year being of 354 days

One of the most important events of the annual financial calendar in India is the presentation of the union budget in the Indian parliament, a thoroughly modern attribute of the running of a modern nation state. In actual fact a ‘budget’, leather bag of the 15th century which became a set of fiscal plans in the 18th century, in whatever form or rubric, is essential to the running of any country at any time.

And so it was for the period of the Mauryans.

The Arthashastra of Kautilya sets down a well-defined structure for the financial ordering of a kingdom. It is a theoretical treatise and cannot be taken as a manual of the financial ordering of the Mauryan state. When studied together with evidence from other sources, Greek, Buddhist, Jain and also the inscriptions of Samrat Ashok, however, it appears that Mauryan budgeting could have approximated to the theoretical structure set up in book two of this ancient compendium on politics and economics.

The budget and accounts were to be prepared annually, with the year being of 354 days. Entries were made with reference to the king’s regnal year, ‘rajavarsham’ which was made to coincide with the work year, ending on the full moon day of the month of Ashadha (June/July); what we today recognise as the day of Guru Poornima. Individual date entries were made as per year, month, fortnight and day.

The ‘Samaharta’ or the mantri whom we would call the Finance Minister today, was responsible for the preparation of the budget and accounts. He was to fix the amount of revenue to be collected from all the heads of income and then to arrange the income under the aayamukhas or sources. He was enjoined to show an increase in revenue and a reduction in expenditure and to try and address the problem of excess of expenditure over income if this should arise.

To explain further:

The items of revenue were called the ‘aayasharira’ or the body of income and classified under seven heads, city, country, mines, irrigation works, forests, cattle herds and trade routes.

The incomes from the city consisted of customs duties, fines, income from weights and measures department, issue of passports, liquor, yarn, ghee, goldsmiths, prostitutes, gambling, artists, temples etc. Quite a varied collection of income sources, some which would be frowned upon now! From the country came income from agriculture; salt, minerals and precious stones provided income from mines.

The irrigation-works head collected income from flowers, fruits vegetable sales, etc. and forests and cattle herds collected what we would now call income from animal husbandry. Given the pivotal importance of trade for the Mauryan empire, trade routes were a separate and important head of their own. The revenue from these heads was further classified into seven ‘aayamukhas’ or sources- price, share, tax, duty, levy, surcharge or penalty.

On the expenditure side or the ‘vyayasharira’ there were fifteen heads, including firstly, expenditure for worship of the gods, and charity.

The most important heads were those related to the armed forces, the armoury and the palace. Stores, factories, labourers, maintenance of animal wealth were other important heads of expenditure. Majority of the expenditure was on state account and only a few can be construed as part of the king’s privy purse (salaries for all the royals except the king were also fixed at a specific level).

Expenditure heads do not detail any items spent on state enterprises such as mining probably because the revenue is net income after deducting expenses.

The same principle applies to all items of revenue. Revenue estimate, accrued revenue, outstanding revenue, income, expenditure and balance were the accounting concepts used to try and present an accurate picture of the kingdom’s budgetary situation at the end of the year going forward into the next one. All these are precisely defined in the Arthashastra and it would be an interesting exercise to compare them with accounting standards today.

A budget estimate of the revenue was made at the beginning of the year with refernce to different areas of economic activity and administrative units such as the village, district, region, etc. The Samaharta (or his office) fixed these estimates and they had to be strictly adhered to by the officers responsible for rendering this revenue to the state stores.

Incomes were classified as current, outstanding and derived from other sources; daily revenue was 'current', that belonging to the preceding year or transferred from another sphere of activity was 'outstanding' and fines, compensation, take-over of property, treasure, increase in prices etc. was 'income from other source's.

Expenditure was also classified into four types, day to day, after fixed intervals of time and unforeseen expenditure arising under these two heads classified separately. After the calculation of revenue and the deduction of expenditure from it, what remained was the balance which was received and carried forward.

One should also keep in mind that most of the revenue received by the state was in kind and there was a complex establishment of state stores headed by the ‘Sannidhatri’.

Another office of great significance concerning the budget was the ‘Akshapataladhyaksha’ or the head of the records-cum-audit office, what we now know as the Comptroller and Auditor General. This establishment was completely separate from the Samaharta and the records maintained by it were to check the accounts kept by the Samaharta’s office.

A comparison with heads in the annual financial statement of the union budget for 2017 will be interesting. The receipts into the Consolidated Fund of India are from tax sources, including income tax, corporation tax and indirect taxes, and non-tax sources including fiscal services, interest dividends and profits.

Expenditure is on general services, social services and economic services. General services include the expenditure on keeping the state up and running i.e. expenses on the legislature, executive, judiciary apart from tax administration and defence. Economic services heads include areas such as disbursements on animal husbandry, irrigation, mines and minerals, industries, rural development and transport and communication.

A quick look shows the parallels- tax resources on the revenue side and similar disbursement heads on the expenditure side.

An interesting difference between Kautilyan and modern budgeting, however, is the lack of specific differentiation on capital and revenue account in the former although Kautilya is by no means ignorant of the differences in the impact and implications of the two and we do get hints of the results of different types of spending.

The provisions for budgeting and accounting in the Arthashastra and its resonance with modern budgeting has led some scholars to posit economic planning by the Kautilyan or Mauryan state, but this needs further study. For one, modern budgeting has a significant developmental push and economic planning is to that end, which is not so in the Mauryan budget.

In the words of R P Kangle, the emphasis in modern planning and budgeting is on development but that in the Arthashastra accounting methods is on control.

The complex machinery of accounting and auditing was set up so that the fruits of economic activity accrue without fail, to the State. The modern ‘development’ mantra, for all its failings is the major thrust of budgets today but we do not, of course, hear of it explicitly in the Kautilyan budget. This is in keeping with the Kautilyan focus on getting resources so that the King can spend them on the ‘palana’ or administration of his subjects.

Which of the two led to greater prosperity for the people at large is an open question until a comparative economic study of relative prosperity in ancient and modern India is conducted.

After two decades in the Indian Revenue Service Sumedha Verma Ojha now follows her passion, Ancient India; writing and speaking across the world on ancient Indian history, society, women, religion and the epics. Her Mauryan series is ‘Urnabhih’; a Valmiki Ramayan in English and a book on the ‘modern’ women of ancient India will be out soon.

Article courtesy: https://swarajyamag.com/ideas/extracts-from-the-arthashastra-a-mauryan-budget