Most stories have a simple plot. A King insults an ascetic teacher. The Teacher swears to destroy his kingdom and extract a sweet revenge. The teacher begins his search for a worthy protagonist for fulfilling his oath. A young man fits the job. He must eventually become The King. They come together with the help of a few allies and bring down the mighty empire, using tact and manipulation. This pretty much summarizes the story of Chanakya. The King in question is King Dhana Nanda and the worthy successor is Emperor Chandragupta Maurya.
In 320BC, about 2300 years ago, Alexander, The Great invaded India. His conquest meets with little or no resistance, given that ancient India was full of small princely states, with no unity or cooperation amongst them. The statecraft and strategies deployed by Chanakya in his capacity of mentor, minister and guide of Emperor Chandragupta Maurya - helps in defeating the armies from Greece. Rest of the story of Chandragupta Maurya and Chanakya deals with the details about the biographies of these key players and anecdotes to build up their character and traits.
Most of India’s rich history is anecdotal with no real formal record of sorts. This meant that every author exercised his or her liberty to fill the canvas with the details to fit a narrative. There are atleast four major versions of the story of Chanakya. The Buddhist version, in Pali, is contained in Mahavamsa. Kathasaritsagara by Somadeva and Brihatkathamanjari by Kshemendra are anthology of stories and anecdotes. The canonical or archetypal representation of a short tempered teacher, who we regard as the author par excellence on subjects ranging from ethics to economics, comes from a sanskrit play - Mudrarakshasa by Vishakadatta. There is a little known Jain version of the story - Parisistaparvan by Hemachandra. It is likely that there are other versions and variations as well. Mudrarakshasa version may be a front runner (?) - simply because of the anecdote that Chandragupta Maurya himself became a Jain mendicant in Sravanabelagola and fasted to death. In the Hellenistic world, Chandragupta Maurya was known as Sandrokottos and Androkottos in two different narratives. I will save that story for a future post.
Something more fascinating seems to emerge when we look at various works of historians. Chanakya is best known his work called Arthashastra. “Artha” is money or wealth and “shastra” can be loosely interpreted as “rules or knowledge base”. This compendium on rules of prosperity and economic well being is actually authored by Kautilya. One story tells us that Kautilya refers to Chanakya’s lineage or gotra. There are other historians who argue that “Chanakya” itself is the name of a lineage (gotra). And a person cannot have two lineages. Therefore, Chankaya and Kautilya are two different people. Arthashastra itself refers to the author as Vishnugupta in one of its aphorisms or shlokas. The Indian version of Aesop’s tales - Jataka tales by Vishnusharma makes a specific reference linking Chanakya with Vishnugupta in one of its Jatakas. That Jatakas are believed to stories of Buddha in one of his previous births is digression - but well worth a note.
Like with all great works of ancient India including its epics and Vedas themselves, the exact authorship has always been a hard to determine with any degree of certainty. Therefore, we go back to the most popular version that is widely accepted by the society at large and rely on Mudrarakshasa as the “golden reference”. And treat Chanakya of "Kautilya" lineage (gotra) as the author, who had a pen name - Vishnugupta.
None of this debate about authorship diminishes the value of the content in Arthashastra or any of the ancient works attributed to him.
