Ramkrishna Bhattacharya
The
history of materialist thought in India is quite old, going back at
least to the times of the Buddha. But its latest form, known as the
Cārvāka/Lokāyata, flourished only in or around the eighth century
CE. It was a living system till the twelfth century.
Thereafter it seems to have
vanished into the blue, without leaving any trace whatsoever. It was
the most uncompromising philosophical system that ever appeared in
India. It refused to accept the notions of the other-world
(paraloka),
i.e., heaven and hell, rebirth, any creator God, and the
infallibility of the sacred texts (the Vedas in particular). Its bold
satire against all this is reminiscent of the Encyclopaedists of
eighteenth-century France. In short, it was a materialist (or, as
some prefer to call it, naturalist or physicalist) system through and
through. All pro-Vedic schools of India, particularly Vedānta,
Mīmāṃsā and Nyāya among the orthodox (āstika)
systems, and the Buddhist and the
Jain among the heterodox (nāstika)
ones, tried their best to refute both the Pre-Cārvāka and the
Cārvāka/Lokāyata views. Unfortunately we are not in a position to
say how the materialists, both old and new, responded to the charges
brought against them, for all the Pre-Cārvāka and the
Cārvāka/Lokāyata works – the base or mūla
texts (a collection of aphorisms, sūtras)
and commentaries and sub-commentaries (if any) – are lost. All that
have come down to us are fragments quoted or paraphrased by their
opponents. Attempts have been made to reconstruct the basic tenets of
the system on the basis of such a pitifully few specimens.1
It
is not easy to say what the Cārvākas really meant. The case is
similar to that of many of the Presocratics whose works have come
down to us in similar conditions. However, it is known that the views
of the Cārvākas have been distorted and wilfully misrepresented by
those who were not only idealists and Vedic fideists, but also strong
supporters of status quo ante
in their socio-economic outlook.
Materialism
in India before the Cārvākas
There
are inklings of Pre-Cārvāka materialist thoughts as well as
expressions of doubts and even open denial of current notions
concerning God or gods, life after death, the soul etc., in much
older works. Like the Cārvākas, some earlier thinkers, right from
the later Vedic times down to the days of the Buddha and Mahāvīra
(sixth/fifth century bce)
and even after, asserted the primacy of matter (consisting of five
basic elements, namely, earth, air, fire, water and space) over
consciousness, futility of performing sacrifices (yajña)
and
post-mortem
rites (śrāddha),
and offering gifts (dāna)
to Brahmanas. The Cārvāka/Lokāyata seems to have absorbed all such
views that had originated before its times and appeared as the
vigorous ‘negative arm’.2
The
history of proto-materialism in India can be traced back to the late
Vedic period (1500
bce – 500
bce). We
have glimpses of scepticism, direct challenge to the authority of the
Veda, rejection of the existence of the other-world (paraloka),
etc. both in the Saṃhitās and the Upaniṣads.3
The Uddālaka-Śvetaketu episode (Chāndogya
Upaniṣad 6.1, 2, 7, and 12-13) has
been particularly marked off as representing rudiments of
materialism.4
However, for a clear-cut exposition of a proto-materialist view we
have to wait for the Buddhist and Jain works. ‘The Duologue of
King/Governor Pāyāsi’ (‘Pāyāsi(rājañña)-suttanta’)
in The Long Discourses (Dīgha
Nikāya) and the Jain work, Dialogue
of King Prasenajit (Rāya-pasenaijja),
have been highlighted by some other
scholars (disregarding the
Chāndogya).5
Another such Sutta, ‘The
Discourse on the Fruits of Being a Monk,’ The
Long Discourses
(‘Sāmañña-phalasutta’,
Dīgha Nikāya),
introduces, among other itinerant preachers, a proto-materialist
mendicant called Ajita Kesakambala, who is said to have practised
extreme austerity by wearing a hair-garment (hence the eponym)
throughout the year, having no concern for heat and cold. This
evidently gives a lie to the notion that all
materialists have been hedonists. Ajita is made to propound the
proto-materialist ‘worldview’ more elaborately.6
The ideas recorded in the Chāndogya
Upaniṣad, however, are rather
fragmentary, although they deal with issues that are not even touched
in Ajita’s declaration. Thus, by juxtaposing the two sources, one
Upaniṣadic and the other, Buddhist, we can reconstruct the first
inklings of proto-materialist thought in India.
Another
point to be noted is that history of materialism in India shows two
distinct phases. The first, as mentioned above, may be called ‘old
materialism’ and the second, beginning with the Cārvākas (who do
not appear in the philosophical scene before the eighth century ce),
‘new materialism’.7
Historians of Indian philosophy, both European and Asian, tend to
ignore the period lying between the Pre-Cārvākas such as Ajita or
Uddālaka (not later than the sixth/fifth century bce)
and Purandara (not later than the eighth century ce),
a commentator on the Cārvākasūtra
and most probably the compiler of the base text. They treat it as a
sort of tempora incognita, a
long period about
which nothing is known, with no indication of materialist thought
flourishing or even surviving anywhere in India.
The
fact is otherwise. We do have a Tamil epic called Maṇimēkalai
(composed between the fourth and the seventh century ce)
which is an important landmark in the development of materialism. A
whole canto (27) is devoted to the discussion of several
philosophical systems then current in South India. A Vedic logician
tells the heroine, Maṇimēkalai:
“These
are the systems that accept logic:
Lokayata,
Buddhism, the Sankhya,
Nyaya,
Vaiseshika and Mimamsa.
The
teachers of these sects: Brhiaspati,
Buddha,
Kapila and Akshapada,
Kanada
and Jaimini.
At present
The
six systems of logic in use are
Through
perception, inference, the Shastras,
Analogy,
presumption and negation.” (27.78-85, p. 149)8
In
the same epic we also have an exposition of the basic materialist
ontology by a bhūtavādin
(an exact translation of this term
would be ‘materialist’):
“When
aathi (?)
flowers, sugar and the rest
Are
mixed, wine is made. Life too appears
By
the mixing of elements, vanishes
When
they separate as [do] sounds from a drum.
Conscious
elements produce life within
And
unconscious ones produce the body
Each
appearing through their [its] elements.
This
is the truth.” (27.265-71, p. 154)
Not
only this. We read of not one, but two distinct schools of
materialism bhūtavāda ‘the
doctrine of the elements’ and Lokāyata, differing in their
epistemological views:
“Words
different from this
And
other facts are from Materialists [Lokāyatas].
Sense
perception is valid. Inference
Is
false. This birth and its effects conclude
Now.
Talk of other births is falsity.” (27.272-76, p. 154)
In
spite of all this, however, nothing specific is known about the
social outlook of the materialists in general and the Cārvākas in
particular. All the works of the materialists, whether old or new,
are lost. Not a single complete book, neither the base text nor any
commentary has come down to us.9
All we have are a few fragments, quoted in the works of the opponents
of materialism.10
There is a general canard that the materialists were all heedless
hedonists, preaching an ‘eat, drink and be merry’ kind of
philosophy of life. Right from the Jain canonical text, the
Sūtrakṛtānga-sūtra (orally
transmitted for almost a thousand years, written down in the sixth
century), down
to the Sarva-darśana-saṅgraha
(chapter 1)
by
Sāyaṇa-Mādhava (fourteenth
century ce)
we read of this criticism. Since we have no way of knowing how the
old or the new materialists responded to this charge, we have to
resort to what other writers have spoken of them.
And
here is a surprise waiting for us. At least two denigrators of
materialism have made the materialists proclaim the equality of the
sexes, and extol the womankind rarely found in Sanskrit literature.11
Moreover, we are told, that the materialists were opposed to caste
discrimination as well.
It
appears from the works of Kṛṣṇamiśra and Śrīharṣa, two
Vedāntin philosopher-poets, that the Cārvākas were opposed to
caste (varṇa)
and gender discriminations. Since we have no option but to
reconstruct the Cārvāka/Lokāyata, in fact the whole of materialism
in India as such, on the basis of the evidence provided by their
opponents, we have to be extra-cautious regarding the possibility of
misrepresentation. However, because both the authors mentioned above
have been already utilized by scholars and historians of Indian
philosophy,12
it is at least probable that their presentation of the social outlook
of the Cārvākas may not be far from the truth.
1
See R. Bhattacharya 2009, pp.69-104.
2
Cowell 1862, p.382.
3
See
Sarup
pp.78-81, Radhakrishnan and Moore pp.34-36, 227 n1, Del Toso
pp.138-41.
4
Ruben
1962, pp.
345-54. D. Chattopadhyaya 1985, pp. 164-227, followed Ruben in this
respect.
5 Frauwallner
2:216 et
seq,
Franco
and Preisendanz 1998, p.179; Franco 2011, p.634.
Haribhadra’s
Story
of Samarāditya
(Samarāiccakahā)
is a re-working of the same story. The three versions do not vary
widely. The original story (now lost) from which all the three seem
to have been derived must have been the same.
See R.
Bhattacharya 2009, pp.22-24.
6
See Appendix
A below.
7
See R.
Bhattacharya 2013a, p.1.
8
For the
concept of ‘six tarkas’,
see Gerschhiemer pp.239-58. This otherwise admirable essay, however,
does not mention the Maṇimēkalai.
–
For a study of the Tamil epics as sources for the study of different
systems of philosophy, particularly materialism, see Vanamamalai,
pp.25-41.
99
Some
scholars believe that the Tattvopaplavasiṃha
by Jayarāśibhaṭṭa is the work of a Cārvāka, although by
‘Cārvāka’ they mean a section of them who were sceptics, not
materialists (e.g. Sanghvi and Parikh 1940, pp .i-xiv, reprinted in
Cārvāka/Lokāyata,
, pp. 394-43,
and Franco 1994, pp. XII-XIII).
Such a claim is not beyond question, but even assuming for
argument’s sake that Jayarāśi was a non-materialist Cārvāka,
the fact still remains that his work does
not represent mainstream
materialism – a fact that is denied only by those who have never
cared to read the book. As V.N. Jha recently observed, ‘The
Cārvākas seem to have accepted only one pramāṇa called
perception and the four mahābhūtas namely, earth, water, fire, and
wind. Jayarāśi demolishes this position also. Thus, although one
may get an impression initially that Jayarāśi is the follower of
the Cārvāka school, one will be disillusioned once one completes
the reading of the text carefully’ (p. xi).
10
For a
collection of available fragments, see n1 above. For another
translation of the aphorisms and pseudo-aphorisms and the verses
attributed to the Cārvākas
(most of them of doubtful authenticity), see Franco 2011.
11 One
honorable exception is Varāhamihira (505-87) who is eloquent in
praise of women in his compendious work, Bṛhatsaṃhitā,
part 2, chap. 27 (74), particularly verses 2-11.
12
See,
for instance, Muir
1861,
reprinted
in
Cārvāka/Lokāyata
(C/L),
365 n3, 366-67 n13; H. Shastri 1925, reprinted
in
C/L,
p.382; D. R. Shastri 1957, p.62; Dasgupta, 3: 531 n2, 532, etc.
Prof 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.
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