10.A Indic Sources

Abstract

Agriculture and animal husbandry, along with trade, constitute economics. It is of benefit because it provides grain, livestock, money, forest produce, and labor. By means of that, he [the king] brings under his power his own circle and his enemy's circle using the treasury and the army. 1 When a king gathers levies, taxes, duties, gifts, and fines without providing for protection, he will immediately go to hell. 2 When a man has become educated, he enters the householder stage of life and begins the lifestyle of a man-about-town [nāgaraka], using the money that he has inherited, on the one hand, or obtained from gifts, conquest, trade, or wages, on the other, or from both. 3 These three quotations come from three different traditions of śāstras: artha (economic pursuit), dharma (religious pursuit), and kāma (pursuit of desire) respectively. 4 Śāstra is "a verbal codification of rules, whether of divine or human provenance, for the positive and negative regulation of some given human practices." 5 The Sanskrit śāstras are of two types, pauruṣ eya (of human origin or compilation) and apauruṣ eya (of transcendental or divine origin). 6 The dharmaśāstras and the arthaśāstras, along with various other treatises, belong to the pauruṣeya (human origin). 7 Together, the dharmaśāstras also appear as the pervasive regulator of