268 
Rajendralala Mitra —On Gonikdputra and Gonardiya. [No. 3, 
It would appear that the original personal name of the individual was Yishnu- 
gupta, “the protected of Vishnu,” which is a fair index to the religion which 
his father professed. In the Purvapithilea of the Mudra-rakshasa there is 
a story which says that Vishnugupta and his parents were, by order of the 
Nanda king, confined in a dungeon where they had nothing to eat but gram 
(chanaka), hence the name Chanakya, but the work is of modern date and 
its attempt at derivation is obviously fanciful. (Notices of Sanskrit MSS. 
IV, 227.) Hemachandra’s Ghanakatmaja shows that he was the son of one 
Chanaka, whence the name Chanakya, a very appropriate patronymic. He 
was a descendant of the Vatsya clan, whence Vatsyayana. He was the Ma- 
chiavelli of his age, and the many complicated schemes by which he dethroned 
the Nandas and gave the kingdom of Pataliputra to Chandragupta, got him 
the nickname of Kautilya, the “ tortuous,” or “ wicked,” or “ crafty one.” 
The epithet Mallanaga means “ the serpent among heroes,” and perhaps 
bears relation to the insiduous tactics by which he overcame the army of 
the Nandas. As a student of Nyaya his memory was so strong that he 
could remember for a fortnight a thesis once told him, and hence the name 
Pakshila Svami.* The epithet Svatni shows that he had at the last stage 
of his life become an ascetic preceptor. As Dramila he is known as a poet. 
I have not heard the name Angula associated with any Sanskrit work, 
ancient or modern. Now, this Vatsyayana lived at the time of Alexander’s 
invasion of India, and, bearing in mind the fact of the extreme reluctance 
displayed by Indian authors to cite the authority of their contemporaries, 
the inference would be almost inevitable that Gonardiya and Gonikaputra 
must have lived long before that time. On the other hand Patanjali lived 
considerably more than a century after the time of Alexander, and it would 
have been b}' no means inconsistent for him to quote from authors who had 
acquired the halo of at least three, and probably four or five, centuries, 
antiquity before him, and who had two centuries before been quoted by 
Vatsyayana. 
Respect for the dictum of Kaiyata might induce some to urge— 
though it would be more a cavilling than an argument—that there may 
have been a Gonardiya and a Gonikaputra before the time of Vatsyayana 
and necessarily long before that of Patanjali, and yet there was nothing 
to prevent Patanjali from bearing those epithets as his aliases. The man¬ 
ner, however, in which those names have been cited leaves no room for the 
entertainment of such an opinion ; and after all it would amount to a 
mere ipse dixit without a scintilla of proof. 
The last issue in the case is a purely personal one, and it is just what an 
Indian like me cannot approach without the greatest diffidence. Kaiyata, 
Hemachandra, Bhattoji Dikshita, and Nagoji Bhatta are the most renown- 
* This is, however, said of Pakshadhara Misra, a much later author. 
