Carvaka

From Philosopedia

Carvaka / Charvaka / Cārvāka / Lokayata / Lokyāta

Carvaka, also frequently transliterated as Charvaka or Cārvāka, and also known as Lokayata or Lokyāta, is a thoroughly materialistic and atheistic school of thought with ancient roots in India. It is strongly embedded in the mayavadi or hedonist philosophy. A system of philosophy often called Carvaka, after one of its earliest adherents, was first put forward in the Brhaspati Sutra in India, probably about 650 to 600 BCE. This text has not survived and, like similar philosophies in Greece, much of what we know of it comes from attacks by its critics. It put forward a materialism that tells us to live life joyously, rules out the supernatural, dismisses religious histories, and rejects inferential logic, or induction.

Its adherents did not believe in a future life: Only this world exists. By some, it has been called the most ancient atheistic doctrine known to historians.

A. J. Mattill Jr., in "An Ancient Atheist" (The American Rationalist, January-February 1999), describes the materialistic view of Carvaka: matter is eternal and consists of the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water. Naturalistically, not supernaturalistically, there is no heaven, hell, transmigration of souls, retribution, reward, punishment. The only "Supreme Being" is the earthly ruler of a state, one expected to be the arbiter of right and wrong in society. This doctrine rejects the authority of the Vedas, advocates trying to achieve happiness here and now, and finds all religion an aberration.

The views of the school's founder, Br[i]haspati, are now lost, but fugitive remarks of his have survived, according to Mattill.

Although there is one extant sutra that is called The Br[i]haspati Sutra, that was translated by F. W. Thomas in 1921, the "sutra" Thomas translated appears to be a treatise on statesmanship from a much later period, not an explication of anything scholars recognize as essential Lokayata doctrine.

Haribhadra Suri, in his Sad-Darsana-Samuccaya, around 750 C. E., is thought to have provided a few verses from the real Br[i]haspati Sutra. He quotes from Lokayata doctrine, citing the Lokayata creed, in contrast to the tangential relationship of the extant "sutra" translated by Thomas.

Moreover, one of the verses Haribhadra quotes is validated as being a Br[i]haspati verse by a devoted Br[i]haspati adherent of the 8th century C.E., Jayarasi Bhatta in his Tattvopaplava-Simha. The verses Haribhadra Suri supplies are as follows:

• There is neither god nor liberation. Merit and demerit also do not exist. Nor is there any fruit of virtue and vice.

• This world consists of only as much as is within the scope of the senses. What the vastly learned ones speak of is but similar to "Oh! Dear! Look at the footprints of the wolf!"

• Oh! The one who has become all the more beautiful! Drink and eat. Oh! The one with a charming body! That which is past does not belong to you. Oh! The timid one! The past never comes back. This body is only a collectivity.

• Moreover, earth, water, fire and air are the four forms of matter. The only valid form of knowledge is the one produced by the senses.

• When there is a collectivity of the forms of matter, the earth, etc., there is production of the body. Just as the power of intoxication from the ingredients of a spiritous drink, so also is determined the presence of the self's consciousness.

• Therefore, on the part of the ordinary people, the activity for the obtainment of the unseen, leaving aside the seen, is only extreme foolishness.

• The pleasure that is produced in a person due to the obtainment of the desired and the avoidance of the undesired is useless.

• The implication of the conclusions is to be critically discussed by the intelligent.

A later work, the Sarva-Darsana-Sangraha by Madhavacharya from around the 14th century C.E. provides these verses:

No heaven exists, no final liberation,

No soul, no other world, no rites of caste.

The triple veda, triple self command,

And all the dust and ashes of repentence -

These yield a means of livelihood for men

Devoid of intellect and manliness. . . .

How can this body when reduced to dust

Revisit earth? And if a ghost can pass

To other worlds, why does not strong affection

For those he leaves behind attract him back?

The costly rites enjoined for those who die

Are but a means of livelihood devised

By sacerdotal cunning - nothing more. . . .

While life endures, let life be spent in ease

And merriment; Let a man borrow money

From all his friends, and feast on melted butter.

Such fragments show a kind of random information about Brihaspati's thinking and illustrate how Lokayata's thinking protested the superstitions of its day. Mattill concludes that some of us “may prefer Epicurus’s description of the summum bonum" to Br[i]haspati's.

The name C[h]arvaka is generally viewed as that of an especially conspicuous follower of Br[i]haspati, one who was either a much younger contemporary of Br[i]haspati's, or he was an influential atheist of a slightly later period altogether. In the Hindu epic Mahabharata, Carvaka, who was a friend of Duryodhana, was burned alive. This Charvaka was one of the few descendants of the then ancient Charvakas as per Krishna, the avatar of the Hindu god of preservation, Vishnu.

The term Lokayata, however, has been applied to this doctrine as a whole from the start. Thus, while both C[h]arvaka and Lokayata have come to be equally common as generic references to this ancient philosophy that dates back to 650 or 600 B.C.E., Lokayata is arguably the more apt term when referring to the doctrine.

(See Carvaka/Lokayata: An Anthology of Source Materials and Some Recent Studies, edited by Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya. New Delhi, 1994, xv, 543 pages. Also, see Dr. Dakshina Ranjan Sastri’s 1967 work, C(h)arvaka Philosophy).

{See Geoffrey Riggs.}