R. Shamasastry

Rudrapatna Shamasastry FRAS (1868–1944) was a Sanskrit scholar and librarian at the Oriental Research Institute Mysore. He discovered and published the Arthashastra, an ancient Indian treatise on statecraft, economic policy, and military strategy.

Shamasastry was born in 1868 in Rudrapatna, a village on the banks of the Kaveri river in what is today the state of Karnataka, to a Sankethi Brahmin family. His early education started in Rudrapatna. He later went to the Mysore Samskruta Patasala and obtained his Sanskrit Vidwat degree with high honours. In 1889, Madras University awarded him a BA degree. Impressed by his ability in classical Sanskrit, Sir Sheshadri Iyer, the then Dewan of Mysore Province, nurtured and helped Shamasastry, making it possible for him to join the Government Oriental Library in Mysore as librarian. He "had mastered Vedas, Vedanga, classical Sanskrit, Prakrit, English, Kannada, German, French and other languages."

The Oriental Research Institute was established as the Mysore Oriental Library in 1891. It housed thousands of Sanskrit palm-leaf manuscripts. As librarian, Shamasastry examined these fragile manuscripts daily to determine and catalogue their contents.

In 1905, Shamasastry discovered the Arthashastra among a heap of manuscripts. He transcribed, edited and published the Sanskrit edition in 1909. He proceeded to translate it into English, publishing it in 1915.

The manuscript was in the Grantha script. Other copies of the Arthashastra were discovered later in other parts of India.

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