There is absolutely no historical evidence that a man called Chanakya ever lived during Mauryan times (300 BC) or that he guided Chandragupta Maurya to kingship. What we have is a story based on later Buddhist and Jain chronicles and Sanskrit plays like Mudra-rakshasa, all imagined after 500 AD, i.e, 700 years later.
Buddhists proclaimed Chandragupta’s grandson, Ashoka, as champion of Buddhism. Jains told stories of how Chandragupta embraced Jainism and even fasted to death in Karnataka. Not wanting to be left behind, Brahmins argued that Chandragupta owed his success to a Brahmin minister—Chanakya, who was even identified with Kautilya, the author of Arthashastra. Today this is viewed as fact. But the Arthashastra refers to Chinese silk and Roman gold coins, both of which came to India around 200 AD, almost 400 years after Mauryan rule.
The Chandragupta-Chanakya relationship is a common narrative trope found in legends around the world. The talented youth and his shrewd mentor, much like the British myth of King Arthur and the sorcerer Merlin. Rajput chronicles of the 10th century present Harit Rishi as the yogi who guides Bappa Rawal against Arab invaders. Jain narratives from 12th-century Gujarat tell us how Acharya Hemachandra discovered an orphan with royal signs, raised him within Jain discipline, then watched him become King Kumarapala, patron of temples and inscriptions. In 14th-century Deccan, the Shaivite sage Vidyaranya is widely believed to be the mentors of Hakka and Bukka, who found Vijayanagara: vision from the ascetic, execution by the warrior. Buddhist memory folds Greek Menander (100 BC) into the Milinda Pañha under the guidance of Nagasena and welds Kanishka (100 AD) to the poet-monk Ashvaghosha. The pattern travels northeast to Tibet and Mongolia, where the Lama replaces the Rishi: Kublai Khan in the 13th century seeks counsel from the Phagpa Lama, later Dalai Lamas sanctify Mongol thrones. Across cultures, the partnership is constant: one consults, the other implements.
The legend of Chanakya is simply this trans-civilisational script recast as Indian patriotism, with a dash of casteism—a Brahmin scholar manipulating politics to restore righteous order, overthrow corruption, and enthrone a “just” empire so that Brahmin wisdom may eternally guide royal might. When this story entered popular imagination, it installed a national mascot of cleverness and ruthless realism: Chanakya as India’s Machiavelli, though separated by nearly two millennia. Television serials, airport novels, motivational posters, and management books celebrate him as the archetype of Indian strategy. But what they celebrate is not a documented historical individual; it is a convenient fiction that re-centres the Brahmin from ritual sidelines to the nerve centre of power.
Why do such legends thrive? Because religion desires power and power desires sanctity. Monasteries depend on royal patronage; kings depend on priestly approval. Every copperplate grant, every prasasti, every court kavya is a receipt for this transaction, stamped with divinity. The saint’s alleged detachment from wealth becomes the perfect marketing line for institutional enrichment; the king’s alleged obedience to wisdom becomes the perfect alibi for territorial ambition. In this arrangement, the religious teacher is portrayed as pure and above politics, yet his counsel shapes empires; he claims no interest in land, yet the realms he blesses fatten his monastery. The transaction hides behind spiritual vocabulary.
Modern India has doubled down on this fantasy. Politicians quote “Chanakya niti” as proof of timeless statecraft; business schools extract “management lessons” from aphorisms with dubious provenance; TV dramas cast him as proto-nationalist mastermind who rescued a broken land.
The cost of this romance is under-discussed. When we elevate the priestly strategist over the messy coalition of merchants, soldiers, officials, farmers, and frontier clans who actually build states, we erase material history and replace it with clerical hagiography. When we worship “strategy” as a set of cynical tricks rather than a patient reading of institutions, resources, logistics, and geography, we teach young minds to value manipulation over understanding. And when we insist that civilisational greatness requires a single guiding Brahmin, we shrink a plural subcontinent into a single caste’s flattering mirror.
The refusal to ask for contemporaneous evidence is not innocent; it is political. It allows any present regime to draft a pliant sage from the past to bless its agenda. It also allows religious establishments to claim intellectual authorship of every imperial success while disclaiming every imperial atrocity. Conveniently, the sage is always right when the king triumphs, and never responsible when the king fails. The Chanakya myth is thus less about Mauryan history and more about our present hunger for a disinfected past in which power is wise, violence is necessary, and the Brahmin is indispensable.
