Kautilya's legacies

Book review of 'Kautilya's Arathashastra: An Intellectual Portrait'

Kautilya’s Arathashastra: An Intellectual Portrait 

The Classical Roots of Modern Politics in India

Subrata K Mitra & Michael Liebig 

Nomos

568 pages; $115.61

This book is indirectly an outgrowth of Michael Liebig’s doctoral thesis on Kautilya, published in German in 2014, which was a seminal work that followed in the tradition of Max Muller of mining and re-presenting ancient Indian knowledge for contemporary readers. The authors craft a masterly narrative, tightly researched and sweeping in its ambit. The work deserves serious attention for its depth and originality. It is good that an Indian edition of the book, presumably at an