According to Raina, the importance of intelligence can be traced all the way back to the Vedas, which talks about sapasah or spies with a thousand eyes. According to the Laws of Manu, “the king—with the help of spies—must collect intelligence pertaining to his own kingdom as well as enemy kingdoms’. The most in-depth text that deals with spies and espionage as instruments of the State is by Kautilya, the great Indian statesman-philosopher, in the Arthashastra, which talks of nine different classes of spies (and their various guises) spread over two categories—one more pervasive while the other more transitory, which also included the use of women spies. That’s right, our very own Mata Hari (the seductively famous female spy who was convicted of pro-German espionage and executed by France during World War I). According to Kautilya, a king needed espionage (including assassins) in order to successfully rule and expand his kingdom.