Kautilya's Arthashastra, composed around 300 BC, details state-managed grain reserves, price stabilisation mechanisms, and compensation for traders who suffered losses — an early South Asian framework for institutional loss mitigation.

The Arthashastra's sophisticated treatment of statecraft and economic management provides context for the Mauryan period in which Sanskrit literary culture flourished; concepts of royal duty to protect subjects from loss appear in Kalidasa and other classical Indian poets.