We decoded Kautilya Arthashastra Book 9 Chapter 6 for you. Strategies for Separating Traitors from Innocent Citizens and Winning Over Enemies: Insights from Ancient Political Texts
| Problem | Solution |
|---|---|
| Separating citizens and country-people from traitors | Employ all the strategic means, except coercion, to identify and take steps against the leaders of the seditious. |
| Separating people from an enemy | Employ conciliation and other strategic means to frustrate the attempt of those who are the enemy’s principal agents. |
| Success is mixed due to the combination of traitors and loyal persons | Achieve success through the agency of loyal persons, for in the absence of support, nothing that requires support for its existence can exist. |
| A friend does not come to terms | Frequently resort to intrigue and win over the friend through the agency of spies, or by attempting to win over a friend who is the last among combined friends or who occupies middle rank. |
| Conciliating a virtuous king | Praise his birth, family, learning, and character, and point out the relationship which his ancestors had with the proposer of peace, or describe the benefits and absence of enmity shown to him. |
| Conciliating a king who is of good intentions or who has lost his enthusiastic spirits | Win him over by conciliation. |
| Conciliating a greedy king or a king who has lost his men | Win him over by giving gifts through the medium of ascetics and chiefs who have been previously kept with him for the purpose. |
| Sowing seeds of dissension between two kings | Threaten the timid king with destruction and tell him that the other king is working against him. |
| Spreading false information about merchandise or commodities | Spies may spread the information that the commodities are obtained from one whom the enemy wanted to march against. |
| Gathering merchandise peculiar to the enemy’s country | Spies may sell that merchandise to other important enemies and tell them that it was given by the enemy. |
| Causing highly treacherous people among the enemy’s people to live with the enemy, armed with weapons, poison, and fire | Induce them to say that the minister was killed at night (by such and such a person). |
| Telling enthusiastic and powerful kings to seize the country of another king | Tell them to seize the country of the king, with whom a treaty of peace is standing. |
