Southern States - Karnataka

Seminar on `Arthashastra' from Thursday

By Our Staff Correspondent

Mysore June 10. An international seminar on Kautilya's Arthashastra will be here from June 13 to 16 to mark the centenary of its discovery. This ancient Indian treatise on polity was a popular text frequently quoted from by Indian and foreign scholars, but its existence was in doubt until the complete text was discovered at the Oriental Research Institute (ORI) in Mysore by R. Shama Shastry 100 years ago.

The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Mysore, S.N. Hegde, told presspersons here on Monday that scholars knew of its existence only by name until its discovery by Prof. Shastry and its subsequent publication by the ORI in 1909. Scholars from all over the world, including historians, supporting the school of thought that Arthashastra was a compendium of many writers and thinkers would attend the seminar. There would be sessions in Sanskrit, Hindi, English, and Kannada. Arrangements would be made to sell the ORI publications at a 50 per cent rebate during the event. There would also be an exhibition of rare palm leaf and paper manuscripts and the publications of the ORI.

As a tribute to Kautilya, the Sanskrit drama, Mudra Rakshasa, of Vishakadatta would be enacted by the students of Maharaja's Sanskrit College under the direction of Vidwan Gangadhara Bhat on Thursday. The Nrithyagiri Association would present a dance-drama, Kautilya Vandanam, directed by the danseuse, Kripa Phadke, on Friday.

The Minister of State for Higher Education, G. Parameshwar, would inaugurate the seminar. V.R. Panchamukhi would release Vishnunidhi, the second part of Sritattvanidhi, a work of Mummadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar.

The Minister for Primary and Secondary Education, H. Vishwanath, would release the Bibliography of Ancient Indian Polity by B.K. Dalai and a multimedia CD on the symposium. Prof. Hegde would preside over the function.

The Vice-Chancellor said the university had proposed a project for digitisation of nearly 80,000 ancient scripts preserved in the ORI. The total cost of the project was estimated at Rs.12 crore. The Department of Science and Technology had shown interest in it, he added.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) had selected the ORI to start the National Centre for the History of Science for which Rs.1.5 crore had already been released. A project to set up a Centre for Indigenous Knowledge Systems had been submitted to the commission.

The ORI is one of the prestigious research institutes and was established in 1891 by Sri Chamaraja Wadiyar.

The institute was built to mark the 50th aniversary of the coronation of Queen Victoria, who was then the Empress of India. In the initial stages, it was called the Government Oriental Library.

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