Sunday, 21 August 2011

Materialism in India: A Synoptic View

Ramkrishna Bhattacharya
0. Many, if not most, people nowadays go straight to the internet rather than look up a book
to know something about anything under the sun. There are hundreds, if not thousands of
files on the Cārvāka/Lokāyata system of philosophy there. Regrettably, many of them,
though well-intentioned, are ill-informed and highly misleading. I am an old hand researching
for decades on the history of materialism in India (see my Studies on the Cārvāka/Lokāyata,
Firenze (Florence): Società Editrice Fiorentina, 2009; New Delhi: Manohar Books, 2010. A
brief exposition will be found in my essay, “Lokayata Darśana and a Comparative Study with
Greek materialism” in: Materialism and Immaterialism in India and the West: Varying Vistas,
ed. Partha Ghose, New Delhi: Centre for the Studies on Civilizations, 2010, pp. 21-34). I,
therefore, find it necessary to disabuse enquirers of several false notions.

1. Cārvāka or Lokāyata is not a “brand name” for all sorts of materialist ideas that flourished
in India over the ages. There were several proto-materialist thinkers in India right from the
time of the Buddha (sixth/fifth century BCE) or even earlier. The system that came to be
known finally as the Cārvāka/Lokāyata did not flourish before the sixth century CE or a bit
later. It is only from the eighth century CE that the name Cārvāka is associated with a
materialist school (some later writers such as Śāntarakṣita and Śaṅkara continued to call it
Lokāyata). Both names, however, came to refer to the same school of thought after the
eighth century CE. Neither of the two words occurs in Vedic literature. Lokāyata in Pali and
Buddhist Sanskrit works means ‘the science of disputation’, or in a narrower sense, ‘point of
dispute’, not materialism. The word is ambiguous. There are reasons to believe that the
adherents of this materialist school themselves called themselves Cārvāka, using it as a
nickname. The word might have been chosen from the Mahābhārata but the demon in that
work has nothing to do with materialism.

2. The Cārvāka/Lokāyata is the only systematized form of materialist philosophy in India that
is known to date. There were other pre-Cārvāka proto-materialist schools too that preached
certain materialist views but their views were not systematically set down in the form of
aphorisms as the Cārvāka-s did. Some of these pre-Cārvāka proto-materialist views are
encountered in the Upaniṣad-s, Pali and Prakrit canonical works (of the Buddhists and the
Jains respectively) and their commentaries as well as in the Jābāli episode in the
Rāmāyaṇa, the Mokṣadharma-parvādhyāya in the Mahābhārata and some of the Purāṇa-s
(particularly the Viṣṇupurāṇa and the Padmapuraṇa), and last but not least, in old Tamil
poems such as the Manimekalai. All of these are not to be equated with the
Cārvāka/Lokāyata. Some of the views recorded in them are authentic expositions of this or
that proto-materialist view, but some are of dubious authenticity. There is a tendency in the
Rāmāyaṇa and some Purāṇa-s to treat the Buddhists, the Jains and the Cārvāka-s as
representing a single school of nāstika-s, that is, defilers of the Vedas, and to ascribe the
views of one to the other quite inappropriately.
3.1. All the Cārvāka/Lokāyata works were lost before the fourteenth century CE, so much so
that Sāyaṇa-Mādhava, aka Mādhavācārya and Vidyāraṇya, or whoever was the author of the
first chapter of this digest of a compendium of philosophies (Sarva-darśana-saṃgraha),
could not quote a single sentence from any Lokāyata text nor name a single authority other
than the mythical Bṛhaspati. Yet this book, first edited and published by Iswarcandra
Vidyāsāgara, better known as an educationist and social reformer, in 1853-58 from the
Asiatic Society, Kolkata, has proved to be more influential than any other work. However, it
is worth noticing that the reading of several lines of some verses attributed to the Cārvākas
are willfully distorted in this compendium. The original reading of a line in a verse, for
example, was as follows: “Live happily as long as you live; nothing is beyond the ken of
death.” It is so found in all other works (no fewer than thirteen). The last part of the line was
changed in this compendium to read: “eat ghee (clarified butter) even by running into debts.”
To many educated Indians and maybe others abroad this distorted reading is granted to be
the epitome of the Cārvāka/Lokāyata. It is amusing that the digest itself quotes the original
reading at the beginning of the chapter but quotes the distorted reading at the end of the
same chapter.

3.2. However, from the available fragments found quoted or paraphrased in the works of
anti-materialist philosophers it is evident that the Cārvāka/Lokāyata system had developed
along the same lines as Mīmāṃsā, Vedānta, Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika. This means:

(a) There was a base text, that is, a collection of sūtras or aphorisms, tersely phrased
because they were meant to be memorized, and

(b) Several commentaries (and probably sub-commentaries) were written to explicate the
aphorisms,

(c) Besides the above sources, a number of verses have traditionally been ascribed to the
Cārvākas. Some of these epigrams make fun of the performance of religious rites,
particularly sacrificial acts, and deny the existence of an extracorporeal soul which can
survive the death of a person. Some other verses, however, might have originated in the
Buddhist and Jain circles. The denunciation of ritual violence (killing of animals in a Vedic
sacrifice) and condemnation of non-vegetarian diet accord better with the Buddhist and the
Jain teachings than with any other school. There might have been some materialists who
renounced both marriage and eating of animal flesh. In that case, the charge of promiscuity
and indulgence in flesh and wine brought against the Cārvākas by Guṇaratna, a
fifteenth-century Jain writer, loses its force.

3.3. The Tattvopaplavasiṃha by Jayarāśi Bhaṭṭa is not a Cārvāka/Lokāyata work: it

represents the view of a totally different school that challenged the very concept of pramāṇa
(means of knowledge). The Cārvākas did believe in pramāṇa and whatever else it entails
(knowledge, the knower, and the object to be known). Even those who, like Eli Franco,
prefer to call it the only surviving Cārvāka text do not claim that it is a materialist text. So the
work is quite irrelevant to the study of materialism in India.

4. The basic plank of the Cārvāka/Lokāyata may be summed up as: i) denial of rebirth and
the other- world (heaven and hell), and of the immortal soul, ii) refusal to believe in the
efficacy of performing religious acts, iii) acceptance of the natural origin of the universe,
without any creator God or any other supernatural agency, iv) belief in the primacy of matter
over consciousness, and hence of the human body over the spirit (soul), and finally, v)
advocacy of the primacy of perception over all other means of knowledge; inference, etc. are
secondary, and acceptable if and only if they are based on perception, not on scriptures.

The first three refer to the ontology, and the rest to the epistemology of the
Cārvāka/Lokāyata. As to ethics all that can be said is that the Cārvākas did not believe in
practising asceticism and advised seeking of pleasure in this world rather in the next, for
there is no such world. This teaching has been misinterpreted as a recommendation for
unrestrained sensual enjoyment. Regarding their social outlook it may be said that the
Cārvākas were opposed to gender discrimination and caste (varṇa) distinctions (see the
Prabodha-candrodaya by Kṛṣṇamiśra, Act 2 verse 18 and the Naiṣadha-carita by Śrīharṣa,
Canto 17 verses 40,42, 58). They relied on human endeavour (puruṣakāra), not on fate
(daiva), and rejected the concept of adṛṣṭa or karman.

This is how materialism as a full-fledged philosophical doctrine made its debut in ancient
India. It is evident that the issues are peculiarly relevant to the Indian context (rebirth being
the most noteworthy). The Cārvāka/Lokāyata then obviously had an indigenous origin.

5. There was no continuity in the Cārvāka/Lokāyata tradition after the twelfth century CE or
thereabouts. Whatever is written on the Cārvāka/Lokāyata after the twelfth century is based
on second-hand knowledge, learned from preceptors to disciples, who in their turn could
only teach what they had heard from their preceptors, not what they had actually studied.
Some of their knowledge correspond to what the Cārvāka/Lokāyata philosophers had or
might have really said, but much of their accounts are biased against materialism and are
mere fabrications.

6. The Yogācāra Buddhists, Jains, Advaita Vedantins and Nyāya philosophers considered
the Cārvāka/Lokāyata as one of their chief opponents and tried hard to refute materialist
views. Such refutations were made even after all the authentic Cārvāka/Lokāyata texts had
been lost. So, the representation of the Cārvāka/Lokāyata in the works of these schools are
not always firmly grounded on first-hand knowledge of the Cārvāka/Lokāyata texts.
7. Because of this lack of acquaintance with original sources, the opponents, and many
modern scholars, often confuse pre-Cārvāka and Cārvāka views, considering them as one
and the same. This gives an impression that there were several kinds of Cārvāka-s while the
fact is that there were several kinds of materialists, but all of them were not Cārvāka-s.
Some of them were definitely pre-Cārvāka and held different views. For example, regarding
the number of natural elements, the Cārvākas admitted four, namely, earth, air, fire and
water, while others spoke of five, adding ether or space to the list.

8. We have no evidence of any post-Cārvāka materialist school in India, existing or

flourishing after the thirteenth century CE. What Abul Faḍl (Fazl) had gathered from the
North Indian pundits about the Cārvāka system (most probably from a Jain scholar) and
recorded it in Persian in his Ain-i Akbari, betrays the same lack of information as evinced in
his contemporary and later Sanskrit digests of Indian philosophy. Only a few highlights of the
materialist system were known to all of them. In addition to this a few verses attributed to the
Cārvāka-s had been orally transmitted from one generation to another. Their accounts
therefore are removed from the original sources and should be taken with the customary
pinch of salt.

9. Some Sanskrit poems and plays (particularly Naiṣadha-carita, Prabodha-candrodaya,

Āgama-dambara and Vidvanmoda-taraṅgiṇī) and one prose work (Kādambarī) contain
representations of the Cārvākas. The evidence is dubious, for the authors of these works
were thoroughly opposed to materialism and tried to portray the Cārvāka in unfavourable
light. Hence whatever is written there should not be accepted uncritically.

10. The commonest charge levelled against the Cārvāka-s is that they did not believe in any
other means of knowledge except perception. But there is enough evidence to suggest that
some of the pre-Cārvāka schools as well as the Cārvāka-s considered inference based on
perception to be a valid means of knowledge, although it is of secondary importance. It was
well known from the eighth century CE.. Nevertheless, the opponents continued to level the
same charge almost in the fashion of Goebbels (“Repeat a lie ten times and it will sound like
the truth.” Whether Goebbels had actually said so or not is irrelevant, since such strategy
was followed by him in practice).

11. Another baseless charge made by the opponents is the alleged heedless hedonism of
the Cārvākas. Of course, there is enough evidence to show that the Cārvāka-s did not
consider human life to be full of misery but there is absolutely no evidence to prove that they
prescribed sensual enjoyment to be the end of life. The case is similar to that of Epicurus,
the Greek philosopher. Although he used to lead a very austere life, his name has been
maligned as a spokesperson of an ’eat, drink and be merry’ view of life. Ajita Kesakambala,
a senior contemporary of the Buddha and one of the earliest proto-materialists known to us,
had in fact made a cult of austerity. The Sāṃkhya doctrine too has been satirized as one
advocating sensual enjoyment. No serious student of Sāṃkhya has ever paid any heed to
this absurd charge. However, in case of the Cārvāka such a groundless allegation is
repeated ad nauseam by the present-day textbook writers of Indian philosophy.

12. Yet another misconception circulated by many authors past and present is that there
were several Cārvāka schools, believing in the mind as the spirit, life breaths as the spirit,
the sense organs as the spirit, etc. Such doctrines might have been prevalent before the
Common Era, for some of them are mentioned in several Upaniṣads. Such views, however,
are not only pre-Cārvāka but also pre-philosophical. The Cārvāka/Lokāyata was
systematized much later and there is nothing to show that its exponents drew anything from
such older sources. Only the doctrine of bhūtacaitanyavāda or dehātmavāda is the doctrine
of the Cārvāka-s. It was a unitary school although the commentary tradition is not uniform
and the commentators are not always unanimous in their interpretation of certain aphorisms.

13. All the commentators of the Cārvākasūtra were not Cārvākas themselves. Some of them
are known to be adherents of Nyāya who, besides their works on Nyāya, had also written
commentaries on the Cārvākasῡtra. Quite naturally they had introduced a number of
sophisticated Nyāya terms, quite alien to the original Cārvāka tradition. Nevertheless what is
common to all the commentators is their firm adherence to the basic doctrine of considering
the spirit to be nothing but consciousness in a living body and the rejection of the view that
inference independent of perception and/or based on scriptures should be accepted as a
valid means of knowledge.

14. In brief, then, the Cārvāka/Lokāyata system emerged as the culmination of all previous
proto-materialist views which, however, had never been systematized into the prevailing
sūtra-bhāṣya (base text and commentary) style before the sixth century CE. These views are
mainly known to us as floating ideas current among some freethinkers, who were opposed to
futile religious practices sanctioned by the Vedas and refused to offer gifts to Brahmin
priests. The early materialists did not believe in the existence of heaven and hell, and,
therefore, in the immortality of the spirit. That is all there is to it in the pre-Cārvāka/Lokāyata
tradition. Ontological issues seem to have been their chief preoccupation and this was their
contribution to the later Cārvāka/Lokāyata system which inherited and assimilated all this.
The epistemological issues might have underlain in their teachings, but no such formulation
is met with in available evidence.

15. Whether the Cārvāka-s had any affinity with the Kāpālika-s or some such obscure folk
cults (such as the Sahajiyā-s, Bāul-s, etc. in Bengal), is a vexed question. It is probable that
the these cults had adopted some ideas from the pre-Cārvāka and/or the Cārvāka teachings,
such as, accepting perception to be the only means of knowledge, opposition to Vedism,
caste system, gender discrimination, etc. But it should be noted that these cults are all
guru-oriented, the adherents compose songs in local dialects as the vehicle of expressing
their ideas (not write philosophical discourses), and all of them consider themselves affiliated
to one or the other Śaiva or Vaiṣṇava or Śakti-worshipping community. They constitute
themselves as the ’other’, belonging to the Little Tradition – similar in some respects to the
Great Tradition religious communities but differing from them by virtue of abjuring
Brahminical priesthood, avoiding the conventional places of pilgrimage, and setting up their
own meeting-spots in village fairs. The Cārvākas, on the other hand, belong to the Great
Tradition: they redacted a sῡtra work and composed elaborate commentaries on it in
Sanskrit, not in any vernacular. In short, the two belong to two different traditions – the Great
and the Little – and their ends are more often than not quite different. While the
Cārvāka/Lokāyata was interested in true knowledge (tattva), the Little Tradition cults aspire
for liberation (mukti) alone. The former studiedly rejected all rituals based solely on faith but
the latter had developed elaborate systems of worship and religious practice
(sādhana-paddhati) as taught by their gurus. Thus there is a fundamental incompatibility
between the two that cannot be resolved by juxtaposing them as reflecting the same
approach in two different ways. It should, however, be borne in mind that the Little Tradition
cults were very much present in India even in the Upaniṣadic times, as testified by the Maitrī
(or Maitrāyāṇī or Maitrāyaṇīya) Upaniṣad. Most probably both the traditions had a common
source, but they diverged into two separate streams, one thoroughly rational and atheistic;
the other, irrational and theistic. The Cārvāka/Lokāyata is a system of philosophy but the
anti-Brahminical folk cults are nothing but religious coteries outside the Brahminical (Vedist)
fold. In spite of some similarities in approach (such as, insistence on sense perception,
denial of the Vedas as authoritative texts, and rejection of Brahminical priesthood) they
belong to two different domains. Philosophy and religion are not to be treated on a par with
each other.

Grateful acknowledgements are made to Amitava Bhattacharyya, Johannes Bronkhorst,

Siddhartha Dutta, Pradeep Gokhale, Ashish Lahiri, and Krishna Del Toso for offering
comments and suggestions on the draft.

Ramkrishna Bhattacharya taught English at the University of Calcutta, Kolkata and was an
Emeritus Fellow of University Grants Commission. He is now a Fellow of PAVLOV Institute,
Kolkata.

Email ID: ramkrishna.bhattacharya@gmail.com)

Courtesy: http://en.krishna.deltoso.net/category/carvakalokayata/