"artha" - What is it?

| Om SrI gaNESAya namaH |

 | Om namaH SukrabRhaspatIbhyam |

A "sAstra" gives a holistic treatment towards a subject area and reveals important definitions, techniques and processes to achieve the desired results without causing undue harm to the environment.


In this blog, I intend to make notes/posts from "artha sAstra" compiled by cANakya or kauTilya and translated to Telugu by AcArya pullela SrIrAmacandra.


The first topic is "What is artha?" i.e, what is the subject matter of artha SAstra?

मनुष्याणां वृत्तिः अर्थः । मनुष्यवती भूमिः इति अर्थः । तस्याः पृथिव्याः लाभ पालनोपायः शास्त्रम् अर्थशास्त्रम् इति ॥

The livelihood of humans is called "arthaH", the territory containing human resources with different skills is "arthaH", the sAstra dealing with the techniques relating to acquiring and maintaining such territory is called "artha SAstra".

Unlike modern capitalism, capital is NOT non-living money, gold, land or natural resources alone! A meaningful livelihood of humans is considered as artha. A territory with live human beings is considered as artha. So, the artha sAstra deals with the art and science of building a sustainable political-economical system and maintaining it for really long duration over multiple generations.

SAstra is a living tradition. It is passed from generation to generation in a Guru-Sishya parampara. Always, it is made sure that the techniques revealed by the sAstra do not get into the wrong hands and cause destruction in the world. Due to that reason, every SAstra is encrypted sufficiently so that the non-deserving people do not get to the right essence of the SAstra.

Even when I blog and make notes publicly on the internet, the tradition is maintained intact and it is made sure by the teachers Sukra (the teacher of rAkshasas/dAnavAs i.e, daemons) and bRhaspati (the teacher of devas i.e, gods) sitting above in the vast space controlling the "artha" down here on the Earth from time to time.

Having bowed down to the teachers, I hope to continue making some posts/notes on the subject to this new blog started this SrI vijaya nAma samvatsara, chaitra suddha daSami, magha nakshatra i.e., 21st April 2013.