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mitchtbaum · 2015-09-03 · Original thread
> Is there a well-regarded complete translation?

It seems for English translations, we can pick between: A: R. Shamasastry (1915), B: R. P. Kangle (1969), C: L.N. Rangarajan (1992) D: Patrick Olivelle (2012) [late edit. looks incomplete]

From my initial reviews of A and B, A misrepresents the original text vastly and B translates the original text using the words that are actually written in it. (I find that an important measure for a translation). Reviews of C indicate that it is incomplete and out of order. Therefore, B seems like the only potentially true translation. You can find it on Amazon[0], Google Books[1], and Digital Library of India[3][4][5].

For more information on how challenging it is to translate this work, check out this 2014 essay by Michael Liebig, Kauṭilya's Arthaśāstra: A Classic Text of Statecraft and an Untapped Political Science Resource. [2] (excerpted below)

0: http://www.amazon.com/Kautiliya-Arthasastra-Vols-Sanskrit-En...

1: https://books.google.co.in/books/about/Kautiliya_Arthasastra...

2: http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/17144/2/He...

3: http://www.dli.ernet.in/cgi-bin/metainfo.cgi?&barcode=999999...

4: http://www.dli.ernet.in/cgi-bin/metainfo.cgi?&barcode=999999...

5: https://github.com/cancerian0684/dli-downloader

METHODOLOGICAL PUZZLES AND METHODOLOGICAL/THEORETICAL APPROACHES

The Arthaśāstra's authoritative translations into English (R.P. Kangle) and German (J.J. Meyer) were made by Indologists. Also, the secondary literature on the work comes almost exclusively from the Indologists. 6 The Indological perspective is focused on Sanskrit philology, but with respect to specifically political issues, Indologists are (probably, inevitably so) 'semantic generalists'. Sanskrit philology has made the Arthaśāstra accessible to social science, but the philological meticulousness of Indologists cannot substitute political science terminology – which is the prerequisite for an adequate understanding of Kauṭilyan ideas. The problematic is not merely one of proper translation in terms of political science terminology, but brings up the issue of interpretation in the sense of adequate reconstruction of (latent) ideas or 'complexes of meaning' in the Arthaśāstra and the 'transposition' of such ideas into modern categories.

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