The original Arthashastra manuscript is stored at the Oriental Research Institute in Mysuru, Karnataka.

 The original Arthashastra manuscript is stored at the Oriental Research Institute in Mysuru, Karnataka.

The Arthashastra, written in Sanskrit and dating back to the time of the Mauryan Empire, is one of the oldest books on governance, military strategy, politics, economics, justice, and the duties of rulers.

Scholars say it was composed around the second century BCE. Its author, Kautilya—also known as Chanakya— was prime minister to Chandragupta, the first of the Mauryan rulers. After the decline of the Mauryan Empire, the document was lost.

Rudrapatna Shamashastri, a Sanskrit scholar and librarian, discovered the original Arthashastra in 1905 among the mounds of palm leaf documents lying in the institute, which was founded by Mysore’s Wodeyar kings in 1891. The institute has been part of the University of Mysore from 1916, and is home to about 70,000 rare palm-leaf manuscripts.

Shamashastri transcribed the Arthashastra onto fresh palm leaves and published it in 1909. He translated it to English in 1915.

Until the re-discovery of the document, the British Raj believed India’s ideas on governance and military administration were drawn from the Greeks. The Arthashastra also dethroned Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince, a 16th-century work, as the world’s oldest treatise on political philosophy.

“It has survived from the second century, but now the palm leaves are falling to pieces,".