Bureaucracy to multi-personal communication in Arthaśāstra: The system of Human Mediation

Abstract

Ancient Indian manuscripts bear the evidences of the communication patterns of traditional India. Since literature is the mirror of the society, it can also reflect the communication system of the society at the same time. When we study communication, we mainly go through the western theories and models. People hold the notion since communication study as an independent subject has been initiated in the west we should put our thrust upon their perceptions of the process of communication. In contrast to this radical view the author of the present article attempted to highlight an Indian style of communication process. The assumption is that perhaps the complex process of message discourse could be traced here. The manuscript taken for this purpose is Arthaśāstra, a fine ancient book upon politics and economics, originally written by the ancient Indian scholar Kāutilya or Chānakya. A historical study carried out to find out the communication process embeddedin various chapters of the book reveals some interesting points. The depiction of bureaucracy for seamless function of governance sub verses the structure of seamless communication, rather information transmission. The system of spy also echoes that the medium of communication was chiefly humans rather than material e.g. communication technology. The complexity of the bureaucratic structure is the outcome of the complexity of the process of the communication. Interpersonal communication occurs at multiple layers within the system. The author after careful examination of all these aspects names it Multi-personal communication. Itis also seen that this Multi-personal communication was the foundation for the achievement of Mauriyan Empire's bahujanhitāya, bahujansukhāya cha, a manifestation of the theme of Sādhāranīkaran. Its presence is still observable in modern societies.