  We show that the classical non-abelian pure Chern-Simons action is related in
a natural way to completely integrable systems of the Davey-Stewartson
hyerarchy, via reductions of the gauge connection in Hermitian spaces and by
performing certain gauge choices. The B\"acklund Transformations are
interpreted in terms of Chern-Simons equations of motion or, on the other hand,
as a consistency condition on the gauge. A mapping with a nonlinear
$\sigma$-model is discussed.
