Read the passage given below and answer the questions (Q. Nos. 136–142) that follow :

What was this new state like? Fortunately, we have full accounts, both Indian and Greek. Megasthenes, the ambassador sent by Seleucus, has left a record and, much more important is that contemporary account—Kautilya’s Arthashastra, ‘the Science of Polity’. Kautilya is another name for Chanakya, and thus we have a book written, not only by a great scholar, but a man who played a dominating part in the establishment, growth and preservation of the empire. Chanakya has been called the Indian Machiavelli, and to some extent the comparison is justified. But he was a much bigger person in every way, greater in intellect and action. He was no mere follower of a king, a humble advisor of an all-powerful emperor. A picture of him emerges from an old Indian play—the Mudra-Rakshasa—which deals with this period.

Bold and scheming, proud and revengeful, never forgetting a slight, never forgetting his purpose, availing himself of every device to delude and defeat the enemy, he sat with the reins of empire in his hands and looked upon the emperor more as a loved pupil than as a master. Simple and austere in his life, uninterested in the pomp and pageantry of high position, when he had redeemed his pledge and accomplished his purpose, he wanted to retire, to a life of contemplation. There was hardly anything Chanakya would have refrained from doing to achieve his purpose; he was unscrupulous enough; yet he was also wise enough to know that this very purpose might be defeated by means unsuited to the end. Long before Clausewitz, he is reported to have said that war is only a continuance of state policy by other means.

But, he adds, war must always serve the larger ends of policy and not become an end in itself; the statesman’s objective must always be the betterment of the state as a result of war, not the mere defeat and destruction of the enemy. If war involves both parties in a common ruin, that is bankruptcy of statesmanship. War must be conducted by armed forces, but much more important than the force of arms is the high strategy which saps the enemy’s morale and disrupts his forces and brings about his collapse, or takes him to the verge of collapse, before armed attack.

What does the given verb mean?

‘to delude’