A second copy of the Nītimayūkha survives in the collection — and this one adds something its sister manuscript did not name: Kauṭilya. The treatise on royal consecration and statecraft here cites both Kāmandaka and the author of the Arthaśāstra for the same doctrine of the seven-constituent kingdom.
The seven constituents, with Kauṭilya
The doctrine is stated in its classic form, then grounded in two authorities. Having performed the consecration, the king must rule the kingdom according to established principles. That kingdom has seven constituents, and their order matters.
Having performed the consecration, he should rule the kingdom, and that [kingdom] has seven constituents; they are: the sovereign, the minister, the ally, the treasury, the territory, the fortress, and the army. Kauṭilya also [says]: the sovereign, the minister, the territory, the fortress, the treasury, the army, and the ally. This much is called the seven-constituent kingdom, dependent on intelligence.
The two lists are the same seven in different order — and the text notes that political science is the science of practical matters, so the order matters for use. The second copy's citation of Kauṭilya connects this 18th-century digest to the 4th-century author of the Arthaśāstra, reminding us that the Indian science of statecraft was cumulative: the newest work still reached back to the ancient classics for authority.
The senses against the king
Like its sister copy, the manuscript follows the theory of the state with a warning about the ruler's inner enemies — the senses that undo kings.
The soft-hearted king is seized here by sound, touch, form, taste, and smell as the fifth. Each one of these is sufficient for destruction. The deer, wandering in the form of roaming, is killed through song; the elephant, whose form is like a mountain peak, goes to the tethering post due to the delusion of touch; the moth, with restless eyes, falls into the flame.
The text uses animals to teach: the deer's downfall through sound, the elephant's through touch, the moth's through sight. These are not mere illustrations. They are warnings drawn from nature, showing a principle of statecraft as old as observation itself. A king who cannot master his senses will fall as surely as these creatures, by the very faculties that should serve him.
The inner fortress
Beyond the outer constituents of kingdom and army lies the king's greatest fortress: his own mind. The manuscript addresses this with the clarity of long tradition.
For even one who is able to restrain the mind alone, he will traverse the entire earth extending to the ocean. By the senses which steal away the objects at the end of action. The soft-hearted king is seized here by sound, touch, form, taste, and smell as the fifth. Each one of these is sufficient for destruction.
This is the paradox of the text: all the external constituents of the kingdom — ministers, treasuries, fortresses, armies — matter only if the king has already conquered the internal kingdom. A ruler who masters his mind can hold even a sparse territory; a ruler enslaved to his senses will lose even a vast one.
The weight of a second copy
The survival of two copies of the Nītimayūkha in one collection is itself a fact about the tradition: this was a working text, copied and recopied by those who needed it. Kings, their ministers, their counselors — all turned to these pages for guidance on how to rule. The second copy, with its citation of Kauṭilya, reminds us that such texts were not meant to be original; they were meant to be useful, to connect the reader to a living tradition of statecraft stretching back centuries.