Kautilya’s Concept of Wealth: Artha, Vyartha and Anartha

This article by U. Mahesh Prabhu is a part of “The Kautilya Project”

If you want to know about the importance of wealth, ask a pauper; if you want to know the pains of wealth, ask a billionaire. “It’s a pain to earn wealth, causes stress to retain it, and leads to catastrophe when you lose it. Wealth is a sum of pain and gain,” said revered king-turned-hermit, Bhartrihari. True wealth, like all material things, has its own pros and cons. There are not many texts which explain the nitty-gritti...