New Light on Ancient India:

The Historical Vision of K.D. Sethna

by Pradip Bhattacharya
Sri Aurobindo, the seer of modern India, blamed new trails in several worlds of
human enterprise and had followers of signal eminence in many of them. Some
made their mark in more than one sphere of activity. Integral Yoga and Overhead
Poetry are two such areas in which a number of luminaries have left their mark.
No follower of Sri Aurobindo, however, has not only penetrated these areas but
also ventured into territories such as science and history. Here is where K.D.
Sethna, or Amal Kiran as he was named by his Master, stands distinctly apart.
This remarkable mind has taken virtually all knowledge for its domain and the
clear ray of his piercing insight has probed not only profound issues of
philosophy, such as the question of free-will or the spirituality of the future, but
has investigated Einsteinian physics, detected Shakespeare's mysterious Dark
Lady, Mr. W.H. and the Rival Poet, published 750 pages of poetry and followed
the approach of Sri Aurobindo in plumbing the riches of European literature and
the practice of Integral Yoga. However, that which is unique is his signal
contribution to historiography. Here I shall not go into his remarkable
investigations into Jewish history to fix the date of the Exodus, or into the
question of the Immaculate Conception which patiently awaits a publisher of
vision and courage. My attempt will be to highlight Amal Kiran's deep-delving
reconstruction of ancient Indian history.

It is Sethna's characteristic that even in this most intellectual pursuit, the

dissection of the vexed questions concerning the Harappa Culture, his inspiration
is drawn from Sri Aurobindo. Repeatedly he returns to this fountain-head for
sustaining his arguments, building firmly on his faith in the infallibility of the
seer-vision of the Avatar of the Supramental.

An implacable honesty is what places Sethna head-and-shoulders above scholars

setting out to prove a preconceived thesis. Despite having ready to hand so useful
an opinion as Pusalkar's that the Sanskrit sindhu occurring in Assurbanipal's
library refers to Indian cotton and is the source for the Arabic satin,
Greek sindon and Hebrew sadin, which becomes evidence for trade between
Harappa and Mesopotamia and of an Aryan element in the Harappan Culture,
Sethna was not satisfied. It struck him as peculiar that where the
Sanskrit karpasa, cotton, produced Hebrew and Greek analogues, that same
product should be given a different name in Assyrian, Hebrew and Greek. So he
wrote to the world's foremost Assyriologist, S.N. Kramer[1] who informed him
that the Akkadian word was not sindhu at all butsintu, referring to woolen
garments and having no relationship at all with India or the Indus! Kramer also
denied that the Greek sindon and the Hebrew sadin could be equated
with sintu or sindhu. Thus, what had seemed to be a sure linguistic proof of
Aryanism in Harappan Culture was exposed through Sethna's relentless quest
after truth to be a misreading of the Akkadian text by Pusalkar, although thereby
Sethna lost a major support for his thesis. In the process, he also corrected a
major misconception prevailing among our scholars regarding this word.

When Sethna approached H.D. Sankalia with the first draft of his The Harappa
Culture and the Rigveda, that doyen of Indian archaeologists pointed out the
single weak point in the thesis:[2] The lack of any evidence of Vedic Aryan
culture from Sind and Punjab belonging to the 4000-2000 B.C. bracket. That was
in 1963. Sethna did not rush into print ignoring this solitary flaw. He waited
patiently for well over a decade-and-a-half till the necessary archaeological
evidence surfaced from excavations to substantiate his intellectually flawless
arguments.

This relentless dedication in the pursuit of truth and the uncompromising sincerity
are features intrinsic to Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga which shine forth so
radiantly in Amal Kiran.

In Karpasa in Prehistoric India[3] Sethna investigated the use of cotton in

prehistoric India for arriving along a different route with additional evidence at
the same conclusion that he had put forward in The Problem of Aryan Origins:[4]
The Rigvedic Culture precedes the Harappan; the Indus Valley Civilization
contains Aryan elements. A clinching argument is evolved by Sethna from the
fact of cotton being first mentioned in the oldest Sutras. If the Rigvedic Aryans
flourished in the Indus Valley after the cotton-cultivating Harappans, how is it
that all the Vedas, Brahmans, Aranyakas and early Upanishads do not
know karpasa. Cotton is even found at sites deeper inland in Gujarat,
Maharashtra and near Delhi dated c. 1330-1000 B.C. This is very much after the
alleged incursion around 1500 B.C. of Rigvedic Aryans. Such a continuous
absence of the mention of a product argues for dating the Vedas before the
cotton-knowing Harappa Culture. Here he also suggested that clues to the Indus
script might be found in potters' marks found in pre-Harappan and Aryan sites,
proved that Mulukha of Sumerian records is Harappa and that the Biblical Ophir
is Sopara. Each of these warrants serious follow-up by historians not only of
Indian prehistory, but of Mesopotamian and Jewish history as well.

The second edition of the important work on Aryan Origins[5] became necessary
because in 1987 there was a recrudescence from within India and from Finland of
the pernicious Aryan invasion theory which is at the root of the north-south,
Aryan-Dravidian divide that raises its ugly head time and again in India.

The most important examination in this new edition relates to the question of the
presence of the horse and the spoked wheel in the Harappa culture. The circle
with six radials within seen on several Harappan seals is not found in Sumerian
tablets or Egyptian hieroglyphics as a sun-symbol (which is what I. Maha-devan
et. al. argue it represents). The damaged seal showing a man standing astraddle on
spoked wheels suggests the presence of a spoked-wheel chariot. Moreover, S.R.
Rao's finding at Lothal of a drawing on a potsherd of a figure standing on two
wheels resembling the paintings of Assyrian charioteers is a clinching piece of
evidence. Even more conclusive is the fact that the C-14 date for this damaged
seal is 1960 B.C., long before the alleged invasion of Aryan cavalry that
supposedly occurred around 1500 B.C.

Sethna shows that Asko Parpola, the Finnish scholar, is wrong[6] in stating that
no evidence of horse-bones is available in the Harappa Culture. At Rana
Ghundai's pre-Harappan stratum horse's teeth have been found much before 2000
B.C. The same Rana Ghundai IIIc Culture exists at low levels of Harappa and
Mohenjodaro. From the opposite angle, no evidence of the horse has been
discovered in the excavations in Punjab and Haryana in post-Harappan sites -
which should have been die case if the Aryans brought the horse and the Rigveda
into India around 1500 B.C. - while equine bones have been found of that date
from both Mohenjodaro and Harappa. Sethna quotes the 1980 report from G.R.
Sharma on excavations in the valley of the Belan and Son revealing evidence at
the Neolithic sites of the domesticated horse as well as the wild horse dated
between 8080 B.C. and 5540 B.C. at Koldihwa and Mahagara. Moreover, there is
the 1990 report of K.R. Alur identifying horse bones dated to c. 1800-1500 B.C.
in repeated excavation at Hallur in Karnataka, before the supposed Aryan
invasion. Alur has pointed out that the metacarpals allegedly of the domestic ass
found in Mohenjodaro and Harappa are definitely not of the ass and are possibly
of the smaller size horse. Therefore, the Aryans whom Parpola would like to
immigrate into India around 1600-1400 B.C. cannot possibly have introduced the
horse in the Deccan several centuries before their arrival. Sethna clinches his
point by quoting the ardent invasionist, Mortimer Wheeler himself: "It is likely
enough that camel, horse and ass were in fact all a familiar feature of the Indus
caravans." Thus, lack of representation of the horse, like that of the camel, on the
seals does not rule out their being in use in the Indus Civilization, particularly
when their bones have been found much before the horse is supposed to have
been introduced by the invading Aryans around 2000 B.C. If the horse is a
conclusive sign of Aryan presence, men the report from Sharma proves that the
Aryan was in India long before even the Harappan Civilization. Actually, even
where picturisation is concerned, Sethna cites[7] S.P. Shukla's account of a
terracotta horse-like animal figurine with a saddle on its back from Balu in the
Harappan urban phase.

Sethna could have rested content here. However, with the integrity that is so
typical of him, he raises the question of what evidence there is of any trace of
chariots in Neolithic times where remains of the domesticated horse have been
found? Pointing out that in the Rigveda the chariot is not invariably horse-drawn,
he draws attention to a pot from Susa showing an ox-drawn chariot similar to the
Kulli ware of South Baluchistan with which trading existed. The Rigveda seems
familiar with Baluchistan, as Parpola notes. Therefore, with the horse already
present much before the Rigvedic time, and this illustration of a chariot, the
probability of horse-drawn chariots becomes acceptable even in pre-Harappan
times.

Sethna also takes on the eminent academician, Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, and

points out the contradictions in his assigning to Indra the role of the destroyer of
the Indus Valley Civilization.[8] Archaeologists have found overwhelming
evidence, going back to much before the second millennium B.C., of heavy
flooding of Harappan settlements. In Mohenjodaro itself there is evidence for at
least five such floods, each lasting for several decades, even up to a century.
Evidence has also been found of considerable rise in the coast-line of the Arabian
Sea. Hence, there is no need at all to posit a horde of invading Aryans for
demolishing imaginary dams where natural forces are found to be responsible.
Chattopadhyaya also fails to notice that whatever weapons Indra is mentioned as
using are described clearly in the same hymns as being of symbolic nature.
Similarly, the material objects demolished are also symbolic. Firstly, the Rigveda
gives mighty forts not only to the enemies but also to the Aryans, and these forts
surpass anything that has been found in archaeology of that time (ninety-nine or
hundred in number, made of stone or metal). Secondly, if the invasion came from
the north, how is it that instead of the northern Harappan sites it is the southern
Mohenjodaro which shows a noticeable decline in material prosperity? Moreover,
even here there is no settlement at all over its ruins, which is peculiar if the
Aryans destroyed it.
The coup de grace is administered with evidence from the undersea excavations
at Dwaraka, where the submergence has been dated to about 1400 B.C., tallying
with what the Mahabharata and the Harivamsa state regarding this event
following Krishna's death. If the Kurukshetra war took place around this time,
surely the period of the Rigveda will have to be considerably anterior to it and
can by no means be around 1500 B.C. as the invasionists would like to have it!
Hence, there is no question of invading Aryans destroying the Harappa Culture a
mere hundred years before the Kurukshetra war. The Rigveda, therefore,
necessarily precedes the Harappa Culture which ended around the middle of the
second millennium B.C. Thus, Sethna shows conclusively that all available
evidence sets the end of the Indus Civilization quite apart from any violent
destruction by Rigvedic Aryans.

In 1988 came another major paper from Asko Parpola on the coming of the
Aryans to India and the cultural-ethnic identity of the Dasas. Parpola based his
hypothesis of Rigvedic Aryan movement from Swat to Punjab around 1600-1400
B.C. on the Mitanni treaty and the Kikkuli chariot-horse training manual.
However, neither document has the word "Arya", nor does the recitation of the
names of deities conform to the Rigvedic turn of phrase, as Sethna perceptively
notes. Linguistic study shows that there is a large gap between the Rigvedic
epoch and the time of the Mitanni document whose language is found to be
middle-Indie and not Indo-Iranian or Old Indo-Aryan as supposed initially.

Sethna's eagle eye spots the inner contradiction in Parpola's hypothesis. Parpola
feels that the Harappans spoke proto-Dravidian and not Indo-European because
the horse is absent from the seats and figurines. Yet, he characterizes the
chalcolithic cultures of the Banas Valley and Malawa (Navdatoli) as Aryan
although there too the horse is conspicuously absent. Further, when Parpola
asserts that Pirak horsemen first brought the horse into use into India he forgets
that no horse-bones have been found at Pirak at all! He also makes the mistake of
equating a possible Aryan presence in Swat with Rigvedic Aryanism in arguing
that there was a horse-knowing culture's incursion from Swat into India which
was a Rigvedic invasion. Sethna shows that while the brick-built nature of the
fire-altars found in Swat equates them with those in Kalibangan and the Harappa
Culture, this sets them apart from the Rigvedic which is innocent of brick. Use of
silver is mentioned by Parpola as a feature of the Namazga V culture which he
claims to be Aryan and from where Rigvedic Aryanism was brought into India.
But, points out Sethna, the Rigvedic period does not know silver at all. He shows
that Parpola is wrong in his understanding of what black metal,shywmayas of the
Atharvaveda is. It is certainly not iron, but an alloy of copper and tin,
while ayas of the Rigveda is copper. Even in the later Shatapatha Brahmana,
there is no knowledge of iron, lohayas or red metal being
copper, ayas resembling gold being brass. Hence the Rigveda is considerably
anterior to die iron age which Parpola fixes for it in Pirak c, 1100 B.C.

Parpola next uses the cultivation of rice for the first time in the Indus Valley as a
sign of Rigvedic Aryanism invading India in the post-Harappan period. However,
rice is already present in several Harappan sites within and outside the Indus
Valley, while it is unknown to both the Rigveda and the Avesta. Therefore,
Sethna is quite right in claiming that the Rigveda precedes the Harappa Culture
and definitely the post-Harappan Pirak phase off. 1800 B.C. Even the PGW type
of pottery, with its traits of rice cultivation, is absent along the route supposedly
taken by immigrating Aryans. The latest excavations (1976-1982) by J.P. Joshi
indicate that PGW culture is an indigenous development without any break from
the local proto-historic culture and is not associated with invading Aryans from
the west.

Sethna marshals powerfully persuasive arguments in favor of the Rigveda being,

for all practical purposes, autochthonous to India, using recent statements from
Colin Renfrew pointing out that nothing in the Veda hints at any intrusion. The
Rigveda repeatedly alludes to ancient seers of hoary antiquity but never speaks of
any immigration nor mentions any previous habitat. Sethna's incisive intellect
fastens upon every possible objection that might be raised against the great
antiquity proposed for the Rigveda. As a particular verse carries a reference to
camels, he points out that there has to be some evidence of adequate antiquity of
the domesticated camel for his hypothesis to be proven. He locates such
archaeological evidence going back to the third millennium B.C. To this he adds
the negative argument that silver has been known from 4000 B.C. but is not
known to the Rigveda, which, therefore, must precede this date. Again, the
earliest occurrence of cultivated rice is dated to Neolithic Mahagara and
Koldihwa c. 6810-5780 B.C. Sethna prefers to deduct 240 — this is the
solitary ad hoc element in his otherwise sound argumentation besides the
gratuitous identification of Talmena with tala-mina for proposing the tribe of
Minas from Talmena colonizing Sumeria - and come to 5300 which fits in with
his proposition that the Rigveda would begin c. 5500 B.C. and be ignorant of rice
while knowing the horse well as the Neolithic sites have the horse-bones whose
C-14 dating is 6700 B.C.

The most important contribution in the midst of all this analysis of archaeological
evidence is Sethna's bringing home to the reader how the naturalistic
interpretations of western scholars fail to hang together if the Rigveda is studied
as a whole and that the only approach which makes total sense is the mystic or
spiritual one shown by Sri Aurobindo in The Secret of the Veda. The Rigvedic
verse is most telling: "He who knows only the outward sense is one who seeing
sees not, hearing hears not.(10.71.4)" The foes of the Rigvedics arc neither non-
Aryans nor, as Parpola would have it, an earlier band of immigrated Aryans. They
are anti-divine forces opposing the spiritual inspiration sought after by the
"Aryan'", that is, "the striver", the aspirant. The forts arc symbols of occult
centers of resistance to this quest after die "cows", that is streams of
enlightenment flowing from the Sun of Truth and the Dawn of inner revelation.
Sethna presents an excellent explication of the famous Battle of Ten Kings
passage to demolish Parpola's hypothesis of two waves of Aryans disrupting the
Indus Civilization and also shows how utterly wrong Parpola is in setting in
opposition the Asura and the Deva, for in the Rigveda the Deva does not cease to
be the Asura, except in some very late compositions. Sethna's acute perception
points out basic errors in Parpola's data such as Indra never being referred to as
Asura except in the late Book Ten.

Sethna finds such references existing in Books 1, 4, 6, 7 and 8. He also disproves

Parpola's idea that Varuna entered the Pantheon at a later date than Indra and is
originally foreign to the Rigveda, and demolishes E.W. Hales's thesis that the
Asuras were human lords.

Having proved that the Rigveda is indigenous to India, that there is no

justification for interpreting it as a war between invading Aryans and
autochthonous Dravidians, the former enslaving the latter — a concept fostered
by the foreign scholars which has bred so much bitterness in south India —
Sethna ventures into what can only be described as high adventure in his radical
reconstruction of ancient Indian chronology in Ancient India in a New Light? To
summaries his findings in brief, Sethna marshals evidence from the Puranas and
archaeology to argue that the Sandrocottus of Megasthenes could not have been
the Mauryan king, but was the founder of the Gupta Dynasty. I had pointed out to
him after he had completed the first part of the work that unless the Asokan
epigraphs could be tackled convincingly, his new chronology would break down.
Sethna proceeded to do this also over 300 pages of a closely argued thesis
pushing Asoka back to 950 B.C. and allocating to the Gupta Empire the period
315 B.C. - A.D. 320.

Sethna's 606 page tome, with a 15 page bibliography and a 23 page index, is an
outstanding instance of ratiocination proceeding inexorably from a chronological
absurdity fastened upon unerringly by the clear ray of his perception. Pulakesin
IPs Aihole inscription of 634 A.D. shows Indian chronology in vogue fixing 3102
B.C. as the date of the start of the Kaliyuga, while also referring to the Saka Era
of 78 A.D. According to modern historians, this is the time of the Gupta Empire,
when this system of chronology was made up by the Puranic writers. Now,
according to the Puranas the Guptas come around the last quarter of the 4th
century B.C. If the modern dating of the Guptas is accepted, it means that the
Puranics, face to face with the Gupta kings, placed them in antiquity six hundred
years in the past! It is peculiar that so obvious an absurdity should have escaped
our own historians. Can we help concluding that we are still unable to rid our
minds of the overpowering influence of the dismissal by western scholars of our
own ancient records: The Puranas? They believe in the historicity of Homer and
excavate Troy, but will not allow that same probability to the Puranas simply
because they speak of a civilized antiquity in a colonized country when the
western man was living in caves, and that is unacceptable from a subject race. On
the grounds of the reductio ad absurdum of the Puranics placing their
contemporary monarchs six centuries in the past, Sethna proposes that the Guptas
referred to in the Puranas are the descendants of that Chandragupta whom
Megastlienes refers to as Sandrocottus, contemporaneous with Alexander.
Consequently, the Mauryan Chandragupta and his grandson Asoka needs must
recede considerably farther into die past.

The rest of the book is a thrilling venture as Sethna daringly steers his slender
craft through uncharted seas crossing one insuperable barrier-reef after another to
reach a destination in whose existence he firmly believes. The most important of
these is the supposed linking of the Greeks with Asoka. Sethna's penetrating
insight reveals that the Asokan "yona raja" Amtiyoka of Rock Edict XIII cannot
refer to a Greek king and that the dating of this edict proposed by Bhandarkar is
quite mistaken even on the basis of the current chronology. Next the Asokan
inscription in Greek and Aramaic at Kandahar is analyzed and the conclusion
arrived at that the two inscriptions are not contemporaneous; that the Greek
comes much after the Aramaic and, indeed, explicates it: That the "Yavanani"
script referred to by Panini is this Aramaic script going back to the pre-9th
century B.C. period. The Kandahar II and Laghlman Aramaic inscriptions are
then taken up and proven to be much before the 3rd century B.C. as theorized at
present. Finally, examining the evidence for the reigns of the Sungas, Kanvas and
Satvahanas, Sethna arrives at 950 B.C. as the date of Asoka's accession.

The next challenge is harmonizing this with the wide-spread variety in traditions
regarding Buddhist chronology (Ceylonese, Chinese, Tibetan, Arab, Puranic and
theMilinda-panha and Rajatamngini). Sethna infallibly locates a sure guiding
light to steer clear of this welter of confusion: Buddha's death has to be
determined in terms of Asoka's accession and not the other way about. Thus, with
the latter being fixed in 950 B.C., the nirvana is 218 years before that in 1168
B.C. and the death of Mahavira would be in 1165 B.C.

The argument of Ceylon being referred to in Asoka's inscriptions is demolished

by Sethna who points out that this identification flouts all the literary and
epigraphic data. "Tarnbapamni" and "Tambapamniya" are references to the far
south in India. Coming to the Asokan monuments, he shows that the affinities are
with Mesopotamia not with Achaemenid art, and that they carry on in the
tradition of the realistic treatment of the Indus seals, the assembly hall of
Mohenjodaro and the high polish of Harappan jewellery. From the other end of
the spectrum, Megasthenes is analyzed to reveal that the references point to the
Bhagavata Vaishnavite cult practiced by the Gupta Dynasty, certainly not to what
is known of the Mauryas.

As in his work on the Aryan Origins, Sethna corrects major historical errors here
too. One is regarding Fa-Hien who is widely accepted as having visited India
during the reign of Chandragupta II. Sethna bluntly points out how generations of
historians have simply assumed Fleet's chronology despite the pilgrim's records
mentioning no king at all and the social conditions not tallying with whatever is
known of the Gupta regime. Another such major twisting of chronology which
has been unquestioningly accepted by modern historians is exposed when Sethna
examines Al-beruni's travelogue to show that Fleet misrepresented the Arab
visitor's categorical description of the Gupta Era as celebrating die end of a
dynasty that had come to be hated and not the beginning of the dynasty! A third
misconception is that the earliest Romandinarius (whence the Gupta dinam is
dated) in India is of the last quarter of the first century B.C. Sethna shows that the
earliest denarii go back to 268 B.C. and it is around 264 B.C. that Ptolemy II sent
an emissary from Egypt to India. Therefore, the reference to dinam in the
Gadhwa Stone inscription of the Gupta Era 88 can certainly be in 277 B.C. A
fourth error corrected is that of identifying the Malawa Era of the Mandasor
Inscription with the Vikrama Era. Sethna shows that all epigraphic evidence
points to the identity of the Malawa Era with the Krita Era, and that the Vikrama
Era has been gratuitously brought in just because it is convenient for the modern
chronology of the Guptas. He shows that the Kumaragupta referred to here cannot
chronologically be the Gupta monarch even following Fleet's calculations. By
bringing in the other Mandasor inscription of Dattabhatta which refers to
Chandra-gupta's son Govindagupta as alive in the Malawa year 535, Sethna
shows that dating it by the Vikrama Era of 57 B.C. creates an impossible
situation. He fixes the beginning of the Malawa Era at 711 B.C. This leads to two
fascinating discoveries when linked with other Mandasor inscriptions: that the
Malawa ruler Yaso-dharman (Malawa 589, i.e. 122 B.C.) might be the source of
the legend of Vikramaditya; and that Mihirakula whom he defeated was a Saka
and not, as supposed by historians without adequate evidence, a Huna. Sethna
exposes yet another Fleetian conjecture regarding Skandagupta battling the Hunas
by contacting the epigraphist D.C. Sircar[10] and getting the astonishing
admission that there is no such reference in the Junagarh inscription!

Some of the more remarkable findings in this work which need mention are:
Devanampiyatissa of Ceylon dealt not with Asoka but with Samudragupta; the
Kushana Dynasty imitated features of the Guptas on their coins instead of the
other way about as historians argue: Al-beruni testifies to two Saka Eras, one of
57 B.C. probably commemorating Yasodharman's victory, and the other of 78
A.D. by Salivahana who was possibly of the Satavahana Dynasty; the Mehrauli
Iron Pillar inscription is by Sandrocottus-Chandragupta-I whose term for the
invading Greeks is shown to be "Vahlika" (outsiders from Bactria) which fills in
the puzzling gap in Indian records of mention of the incursions by Alexander and
Seleucus. It is the founder of the Guptas and not of the Mauryan Dynasty who
stands firmly identified as Megasthenes's Sandrocottus.

Sethna provides an extremely valuable Supplement[11] in which he uses the

revised chronology posited by him for fixing the dates of the Kurukshetra War
and the beginning of the Kaliyuga, traditionally dated to Krishna's death, at
1452/1482 B.C. and 1416/1446 B.C. respectively working back 8 or 9
generations of preceptors from Ashvalayana, a contemporary of Buddha, to
Parikshit who was enthroned after Krishna's death. In another discussion,[12]
Sethna examines the Arthashastra and shows it as not having anything in
common with Mauryan times as evidenced from the Asokan inscriptions, and
being much closer to the royal titles and functionaries, use of Sanskrit and of
terms like pmtyanta and Prajjunikas of the Gupta epigraphs and Megasthenes. He
assigns to this work the period close to the pre-Gupta Junagarh Inscription of
Rudradaman I in 479 B.C. A further examination of the religious date shows that
Kautilya's work is in the interval between Panini and Patanjali, but closer to the
former on account of the reference to the prevalence of worship of the Nasatya
and the bracketing of an evil spirit Krishna with Kamsa recalling the asura
Krishna of the Veda, which indicates a period prior to that of the Vasudeva cult
recorded by Megasthenes. On this basis, the original Arthashastra is assigned by
Sethna to c. 500 B.C., having clearly distinguished Kautilya the author of the
work from Chanakya, the preceptor of the Maurya monarch. Here, too, Sethna
corrects a widely prevalent mistake among our historians who have blindly
followed Jacobi who compared Chanakya to Bismarck as Chancellor of the
Empire. Sethna points out the facts: Chankya was instrumental in installing the
Prime Minister of the Nandas, Rakshasa, to assume the same post with the
Maurya king. Thus, if anyone, it is Rakshasa who is the Chancellor and not
Chanakya.

This short survey cannot do justice to the magnitude of the contribution K.D.
Sethna has made to the basic approach to Indian Pre-and-Proto-History as well as
later historical periods. However, if it succeeds in giving some idea of how
remarkable this effort has been in illuminating the dark backward and abysm of a
critical portion of our antique time, and motivates those who are interested in our
history to think afresh, untrammeled by preconceptions foisted by western
scholars and their Indian counterparts over the last hundred years, it will be a
consummation devoutly to be wished. That will also be a fitting tribute to the
master-seer who has inspired such a phenomenal deep-delving, wide-ranging
inquiry into the foundations of our past: Sri Aurobindo.