A Sanskrit treatise of the fourth century BC, Arthasastra is, ostensibly, the world’s oldest surviving document of its genre. Written by Kautilya: the astute Brahmin preceptor and prime minister of Chandragupta Maurya, it is now widely recognized as a classic on statecraft, including a discussion of contemporary Indian polity, political theories, administrative mechanisms, war and peace, and a variety of other subjects.

Though a lot has already been written on Kautilya’s world view of statecraft, polity and kindred themes, this book is veritably the first ever effort to examine Arthasastra from the standpoint of modern science and technology. Analyzing meticulously layers after layers of Kautilya’s complex sutras the author unfolds scientific perceptions, hypo-theses, operational techniques and other significant dimensions of several ancient Indian disciplines, like mineralogy, mining, gemology, metallurgy, agriculture, town planning, civil engineering, and even environment. Himself a professional geologist, Sunil Sharma has adopted the current normative techniques for the scientific evaluation of Arthasastra, while using all through modern idiom to spell out its scientific content.

An unbiased study based on Sharma’s honest, altogether fresh interpretation of Arthasastra’s archaic Sanskrit language and its peculiar scientific terminology, the book will fascinate Indologists, historians of science, and many area-specialist.

About the Author

Sunil Sen Sharma is a geologist of wide repute. Notwithstanding his professional training, his academic concerns have, over the years, evolved in many different directions to focus more specifically on man and nature.

A former Director, Geological Survey of India, he is also an extensively published scholar, credited with the authorship of over a hundred articles and five book: in both English and Bengali. His English titles include Farakka: A Gordian knot: Problems on Sharing Ganga Waters and The Ecology and the Epidemic: A Study on nineteenth Century Controversy.

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