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with respect to fear, avarice, virtue and passion, by ingenious artifices, and then he should appoint them to appropriate duties, discerning their hearts. He should try their speech, when they are deliberating with one another on affairs, to see if it is truthful, or inspired by malice, spoken out of affection, or connected with selfish objects. He should be pleased with truth, but should punish untruth as it deserves,, and he should continually inquire into the conduct of each of them by means of spies. Thus he should look at business with unhooded eye, and by rooting up opponents,*[1] and acquiring a treasure, a force, and the other means of success, should establish himself firmly on the throne. Then, equipped with the three powers of courage, kingly authority, and counsel, he should be eager to conquer the territory of others, considering the difference between the power of himself and his foe. He should continually take counsel with advisers, who should be trusty, learned and wise, and should correct with his own intellect the , policy determined on by them, in all its details. Being versed in the means of success, †[2] (conciliation, bribery and the others,) he should attain for himself security, and he should then employ the six proper courses, of which alliance and war are the chief. ‡[3] Thus a king acquires prosperity, and as long as he carefully considers his own realm and that of his rival, he is victorious but never vanquished. But an ignorant monarch, blind with passion and avarice, is plundered by wicked servants, who shew him the wrong path, and leading him astray, fling him into pits. On account of these rogues a servant of another kind is never admitted into the presence of the king, as a husbandman cannot get at a crop of rice enclosed with a palisade. For he is enslaved by those faithless servants, who penetrate into his secrets; and consequently Fortune in disgust flies from him, because he does not know the difference between man and man. Therefore a king should conquer himself, should inflict due chastisement, and know the difference of men's characters, for in this way he will acquire his subjects' love and become thereby a vessel of prosperity."
Story of king Śurasena and his ministers.:— In old time a king named Śúrasena, who relied implicitly upon his servants, was enslaved and plundered by his ministers, who had formed a coalition. Whoever was a faithful servant to the king, the ministers would not give even a straw to, though the king wished to bestow a reward upon him; but if any man was a faithful servant to them, they themselves gave
