Ramkrishna Bhattacharya
The existence of more than one materialist school before the
Cārvāka (eighth century) has been admitted by modern scholars.[1] They have used different nomenclatures
to denote the pre-Cārvāka and Cārvāka materialist systems. I prefer to use
simpler names, «old materialism» and «new materialism».[2]
Unlike them, however, I do not propose to confine the Pre-Cārvāka materialists
to the period before the Common Era. My contention is that such schools
appeared even in the Common Era and they existed side by side for a long time.
The radical departure made by the new materialists (the
Cārvākas) was most apparent in the field of epistemology: even though the
ontology of the old and the new materialists was similar, the partial
acceptance of inference as a valid means of knowledge marked off the new
materialists from the old ones. The sūtra work most probably redacted by
Purandara seems to have retained the old form of the aphorism: nānumānaṃ pramāṇam,
inference is not an instrument of valid cognition. Purandara and following him
Aviddhakarṇa and
Udbhaṭabhaṭṭa
took pains to assert that inference based on perception is perfectly admissible
but an inference on the basis of verbal testimony or authority was not.[3] If we do not want to appear uncharitable
to Hemacandra and others who continued to ridicule the Cārvākas for not
admitting inference as such,[4] we must say that their understanding of
«new materialism» was faulty; they failed or more probably refused to
distinguish between the old and new approaches.
To most of the people materialism (some prefer to call it
naturalism or physicalism) in India means the Cārvāka or what came to be known
as its namesake, Lokāyata. Both the
words are often used figuratively for materialism in general without, however,
any ulterior motive, but as a matter of habit.[5] The origin of the Cārvāka/Lokāyata
materialist system is thus traced back to hoary antiquity,[6]
at the least to the first millennium
BCE.[7]
There is enough evidence to prove that the Cārvāka/Lokāyata
was not the only system of materialism in India. Even if we exclude the early
inklings of materialist thought lurking in the Ṛigveda[8] and some of the Upaniṣads, and in the teachings of Ajita
Kesakambala as found in the Dighanikāya, there are several indications of the
existence of several pre-Cārvāka philosophical schools that were for all
intents and purposes fundamentally materialistic, although there were some
differences of opinion among them
(stated in clear terms in the Tamil epic Maṇimēkalai
27.272-273, to which I shall soon revert) as there were different interpretations
of certain sūtras among the Cārvākas themselves.[9]
Yet the fact is that we do not come across the name of Cārvāka
in the field of philosophy before the eighth century.[10]
Three other words, nāstika, lokāyata and bārhaspatya, were already current to
designate materialism although the same words, particularly nāstika and lokāyata,
were also used in other senses too.[11]
By the eighth century, however, all these words have become interchangeable in
signification and so used in the works of several Buddhist, Jain and
Brahminical authors such as Kamalaśīla,[12]
Śīlāṅka,[13]
Jayantabhaṭṭa[14] and others. Hemacandra (AC 3.526-527)
records all the four words as synonymous in his lexicon. Names like dehātmavāda,
indriyātmavāda, mana-ātmavāda, prāṇātmavāda,[15] etc. apparently refer to some
pre-Cārvāka systems of philosophy, for these views are discussed separately,
unconnected with the Cārvāka/Lokāyata.[16]
Sāyaṇa-Mādhava, perhaps following Śaṅkara, mentions dehātmavāda in SDS,
chapter 1 (p. 6), to mean the Cārvākas.
It needs to be emphasized that materialism in India,
however, did not begin with the Cārvāka/Lokāyata. On the other hand, it came as
the culmination of a long history of heterodoxy and the attempt to see nature
«just as it is, without alien addition».[17]
There are several words in Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit that bear evidence to the
existence of materialist outlooks, if not of systems, before the Cārvākas. We
shall take up two such words first.
1. Nāstika
The oldest word implying dissidence from the orthodox
Brahminical view of the world is of course nāstika, the Neinsager (to use a
convenient word once employed by Bertolt Brecht in his play Der Jasager und der
Neinsager). The KUp (sometime after the fifth century BCE) is perhaps the first
attempt to refute the heretical idea, namely, denial of the after-world, which
characterized the idealists and the materialists in India.
The word nāstikya, like another such word avaidika, however occurs
only once in the whole Upaniṣadic
literature, and that too in a later text, MUp 3.5 and 7.10 respectively. We
learn from Vāmana and Jayāditya, commentators of Pāṇini’s
Aṣṭādhyāyī,
that it is the existence of the after-world that is affirmed and denied by two
sets of people; those who affirm are known as āstikas; those who deny, nāstikas.[18] This was the original meaning of these
terms. Other meanings, such as the upholder and the denigrator of the Veda,[19] the theist and the atheist (current in
modern Indian languages such as Bangla, Hindi, Marathi, etc. even today), etc.
came later.
The Jains explain the word somewhat differently: a nāstika
is one who thinks that there is no virtue and vice, nāsti puṇyaṃ
pāpam iti matirasya nāstikaḥ.[20] To this Malliṣeṇa adds the denial of the after-world[21] and Guṇaratna,
the denial of the self: te (scil. nāstikāḥ)
ca jīvapuṇyapāpādikaṃ na manyante.[22]
The opposition is on ethical grounds rather than ontological.
Medhātithi in his commentary on the Manu, explains the word nāstika
in two senses: a denier of the
after-world (paralokāpavādin; on Manu 8.22) and as one who hold the view that the Vedic doctrines are false (vedapramāṇākānām arthānāṃ
mithyātvādhyavasayaḥ;
on Manu 4.163). It may be pointed out that the first signification is directly
connected with ontology (the view rejecting the existence of the extra-corporal
and imperishable self distinguishes the materialists from the idealists) while
the second is more relevant to the domain of epistemology (whether śabda, verbal
testimony, is to be admitted as a valid instrument of cognition, and if so, if
the Veda is to be admitted as the highest of such testimony). The materialists
are to be called nāstika in the first sense only. In fact Buddhist and Jain
savants join their voice in condemning the materialists as nāstikas whereas in
the second sense the Buddhists and the Jains too are branded so. In both
senses, however, the approbatory nature of the word is obvious. Like another
such word, pāṣaṇḍin, it is loaded with an attitude of
censure and disapproval.
Nāstika is the commonest word to suggest irreligious
attitude. Whether in the Mbh 12.36.43 or Vātsyāyana’s commentary on NS 1.1.2, nāstikya
is used in this sense.[23] But Vātsyāyana also employs the word to
mean materialism (on NS 3.2.61). Similarly the ṇāhiyavādī/natthiyavāī
in the Saṅghadāsagaṇi’s Vasudevahiṃḍī
(pp. 169, 275) and the nāhiyavādī in Haribhadra’s Samarāicca Kahā (p. 164) is a
materialist. Āryaśūra’s Jātakamālā 23.57 employs the work nāstika to suggest a
materialist or a non-believer.
A passage from the Vasudevahiṃḍī
(p. 275), a Prakrit work written in the third century, makes the position of
some earlier natthiyavāis (nāstikavādins) clear:
jahā iṃdadhaṇu jahicchāë daṃsaṇīyaṃ
uppajjati, puṇo vi jahicchāë
paviṇassaë; evaṃ
na koï ettha sārabhūö atthi [*na koï*]
jo sarīrapabheë ï parabhavasaṃkāmī (Emphasis added).
«As the rainbow is seen accidentally and disappears accidentally
again, so is there no essence, [nothing] that goes through another birth to
another body».
E. Frauwallner (1997,
vol 2: 222) interprets a Cārvāka sūtra I.9, jalabudbudavaj jīvāḥ, «Souls are like water bubbles» (see
Bhattacharya 2009: 79, 87) as a denial of the rigorous law of retribution
following from the power of good and bad actions. This would make the Cārvāka/Lokāyatas
appear as accidentalists (yadṛcchāvādins).
But E. Franco’s (1997: 99) way of viewing the simile as an expression of
epiphenomenalism, in my opinion, is more appropriate. The analogy has nothing
to do with necessity and accident.[24]
2. Bhūtavāda
The presence of several groups of pre-Cārvāka materialists
is testified by an old Jain canonical work, the SKS (1.1.1-20, 2.1.15-16). Śīlāṅka (ninth century) in his commentary on
the SKS employs the word bhūtavādin along with Bārhaspatya, Cārvāka and
Lokāyatika (on SKS 1.1. 6-8, pp.10-11). He identifies egesā (in Sanskrit ekeṣām) with the bhūtavādins and calls them
«followers of the doctrine of Bṛhaspati»
(on SKS 1.1.7-8). He uses another synonym, tajjīvataccharīravādin (on SKS
1.1.11-14; pp. 13-14), «one who holds that the spirit and the body are
identical» as well as nāstika (on SKS 1.1.14; p.15). The SKS also refers to
several other presumably materialist schools that mostly spoke of five elements
(1.1.7-8, 15, 20-25) instead of four (which the Cārvākas did). Śīlāṅka apparently did not attach any importance
to bhūtacatuṣṭayavāda
(four-elements doctrine) of the Cārvākas and identified even the bhūtapañcakavādins
(mentioned in SKS 1.1.7)[25] at first with the Cārvākas and then as bhūtavādins
and Bārhaspatyas! Śīlāṅka’s
identification of many of the opponents of the Jain creed, however, is not
always convincing. In his comments on the same text (on SKS 2.1.20) he himself
is uncertain about the identity of «the second man» and proposes two
alternatives: either the Laukāyitakas or the Sāṃkhyas.
He uses all the names of materialists current in his time – Cārvāka, nāstika,
Bārhaspatya, bhūtavādin (also pañcabhūtavādyādyāḥ
and more elaborately as pañcabhūtāstitvādivādinaḥ
(on SKS 1.1.20-25; p. 19), and Laukāyatikas (besides tajjīvataccharīravādins) –
interchangeably, as many others such as Kamalaśīla and Jayantabhaṭṭa do (see above).
We do not know whether materialism appeared in south India
(as recorded in Maṇimēkalai,
composed between the third and the seventh century CE) quite independent of the
developments in the north. Whatever the case may be, there can be little doubt
that materialism in course of time gained adherents even in faraway Kashmir.[26] In or around the eighth century one such
school came to be known as the Cārvāka. Partial acceptance of the validity of
inference was their hallmark. They distinguished themselves from the bhūtavādins
and other earlier materialists by declaring their view regarding inference in
no uncertain terms. Yet a host of their opponents, whether they were
Brahminical, Buddhist or Jain, continued to criticize them for not admitting
inference at all as an instrument of cognition.
Who are the bhūtavādins? In the list of rival claimants for
the first cause (jagatkāraṇa)
given in the ŚvUp 1.2, bhūtāni (the elements), along with time, svabhāva (own
nature), niyati (destiny) and others are mentioned. There is no way to prove
that bhūtavāda was a direct descendent of the doctrine of bhūtāni. We first
read of the bhūtavādins in the Maṇimēkalai
who in many respects resemble the lokāyatikas. The bhūtavādin, however, says
that on doctrinal points they have some differences with the Lokāyatas. This
Tamil epic does not mention the Cārvākas, but does refer to the Lokāyatas. A bhūtavādin
is made to declare the basic doctrine of the system he adheres to in the following
terms (27.265-76; p. 154):
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 sounds from a drum.
Conscious elements produce life within
And unconscious one produces the body
Each appearing through their elements.
This is the truth. Words different from this
And other facts are from Materialists [Lokāyatas].
Sense perception is valid. Inference
Is false. This birth and its effect conclude
Now. Talk of other birth is falsity.[27]
The words of the bhūtavādin have been paraphrased by a late
medieval commentator in the following way:
When certain flowers and jaggery are boiled together, liquor
is born which produced intoxication. Just as when elements combine,
consciousness arises. Consciousness dissolves with the dissolutions of the
elements composing them like the disintegration of sound. Elements combine to
produce living bhūtas and from them other living bhūtas will be born. Life and
consciousness are synonymous. From non-living bhūtas consisting of two or more
elements rise non-living bhūtas of the same type. Lokāyata is a variant of this
system that agrees in fundamental with this system. Observation is the method
by knowledge is obtained. Inferential thinking is illusion. This worldly life
is real. Its effect is experienced in this life only. The theory that we enjoy
the fruits of our action in our next birth or in another world is false.[28]
So far as the Maṇimēkalai
is concerned, the number of elements admitted by the bhūtavādins is not
specified; hence there is no way of ascertaining whether the bhūtavādins spoke
of five or four elements. The first statement regarding the rise of
consciousness is very much similar to the Cārvāka aphorism: «As the power of
intoxication (arises or is manifested) from the constituent parts of the wine
(such as flour, water and molasses)».[29]
The rejection of rebirth is a basic materialist position which can be traced
back to much earlier sources.[30]
The bhūtavādin in the Tamil epic, however, rejects inference
as such, declaring it to be false. On the other hand, the Cārvākas, as it has
been pointed out time and again,[31] do admit inference in all worldly
affairs.
3. The Old and the New Materialists: Points of Difference
In view of all this the new materialists (Cārvākas) may be
distinguished from the old materialists of all sorts in the following respects:
a) Instead of five elements (including ākāśa or vyoma,
space) as their principle (tattva), the Cārvākas spoke of four, excluding
space,[32] presumably because it was not amenable
to sense-perception.
b) The bhūtavādins believed in two kinds of matter: lifeless
and living. Life originates from living matter, the body from the lifeless. The
Cārvāka/Lokāyatas did not believe in such duality; to them all beings/entities
were made of the same four basic elements.[33]
c) There was another
domain in which the two differed more radically. Some of the Pre-Cārvāka
materialists were accidentalists (yadṛcchāvādins);
they did not believe in causality. On the other hand, the Cārvākas appear to
have endorsed causality;[34] they adopted the doctrine of svabhāva-as-causality
rather than the opposite one, namely, svabhāva-as-accident.[35]
d) The Cārvākas admitted
the validity of inference insofar as it was confined to the material and
perceptible world (hence verifiable), not extended to the invisible and
unverifiable areas, such as the imperishable soul, god, omniscient persons
(admitted by the Buddhists and the Jains as well), the outcome of performing
sacrifices called apūrva (as claimed by the Mīmāṃsakas),
etc.,[36] while some of the old materialists
rejected inference as such as an instrument of cognition, and clung to
perception alone.
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(vol. 6), Routledge, London, 179.
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Radhakrishnan, S.: 1948 Indian
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Argumentative Indian, Penguin Books, London.
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Vātsyāyana Bhāṣya
(vol. 3), Paschimbanga Rajya Pustak Parshat, Calcutta (rep.).
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Thought in Early Tamil Literature, «Social Scientist», 2, 25-41.
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the Kaṭha-Upaniṣad,
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[1] Frauwallner (1997, vol. 2: 219) speaks of the oldest Materialistic doctrines of Puraṇa Kāśyapa, Ajita Keśakambalin and Kakuda Kātyāyana and (Ibidem: 221) the Lokāyata system (which Frauwallner believes «arose in pre-Christian period» and one Cārvāka was its founder). Franco and Preisendanz (1998: 179) call them «Early Materialists» and «the Classical Materialistic Philosophy» (sixth century).
[2] In his tenth thesis on Feurbach, Marx distinguishes
between «old materialism» and «new materialism». See Marx and Engels (1957: 72). Similarly, Engels (1966: 255) in his
study of Ludwig Feurbach branded the whole of pre-Marxian materialism as «old
materialism».
[3] For details see R.
Bhattacharya (2010a), (2010d) and (2010c).
[4] Cf. AYVD, v. 20; SVM, p. 129;
Vācaspatimiśra, Bhāmatī on BS 3.3.53 (tranlsated in Chattopadhyaya
and Gangopadhyaya 1990: 242-243).
[5] Speaking of
the adherents of a different school of materialists, Guṇaratna (TRD, p.
300) called them cārvākaikadeśīyāḥ,
some sections of the Cārvākas. Sadānanda Yogīndra’s Vedāntasāra
(124-127; pp. 70-72) speaks of several Cārvākas professing sthūlaśarīrātmavāda, indrīyātmavāda, prāṇātmavāda and ātmavāda, sections. Phanibhushana
Tarkavagisa (1982: 69) endorses this view. More recently Johannes Bronkhorst
(2007: 309) speaks of a materialist Cārvāka (not the demon) in the Mbh.
[6] P.L. Vaidya
(1962: 703), in his edition of the Rām., even goes to the extent of
saying that «the tenets of Lokāyata school are as old as humanity itself»!
[7] Sen (2005:
23).
[8] See Del Toso (2012: 138-141).
[9] See Bhattacharya (2010a), (2010d) and (2010c).
[10] Jinendrabuddhi’s
Viśālāmalavatī Pramāṇasamuccayaṭīkā,
p. 24: atha vā cārvākaṃ pratyetaducyate.
For other references see note 11 below.
[11] Bhattacharya
(2009a: 187-92), (2009b).
[12] See Haribhadra, ṢDSam, chapter 6. The chapter is
devoted to the exposition of Lokāyata (lokāyatā
vadanty evam, etc.; 80a), but in 85d we read: cārvākāḥ pratipedire. See
also Kamalaśīla who, in his commentary TSP
on TS, chapter 22, entitled Lokāyataparīkṣā,
uses the names Cārvāka and Lokāyata interchangeably. See TSP, vol. 2, pp. 639, 649, 657, 663, 665, also 520 (bārhaspatyādayaḥ), 939 (lokāyataḥ) and 945 (lokāyatam).
[13] On SKS 1.1.1.6-8 (pp.10-11) and
on 1.1.1.14 (p.15).
[14] NM, vol 1, pp. 9, 43, 154, 275,
387-388, etc.
[15] In Śaṅkara’s BSB on BS 1.1.1, we find the following
expressions: śarīram evātmeti viparyayo
lokāyatikānām; indriyāṇyevātmetīndriyacaitanyavādīnām;
manaścaitanyavādin mana eveti. Vyom (vol. 2, p. 126), bhūtacaitanyavādapakṣa. NM (vol. 2, p. 218), also indriyacaitanyapakṣa (Ibidem, p.
219), yet another view which G. Sastri has called manaścetenatvavāda (Ibidem); Sureśvara’s Mānasollāsasaṃgraha 5.14-22;
Yāmuna’s Siddhitraya, pp. 19-24; Sadānanda Yogīndra’s Vedāntasāra, pp. 70-72;
Sadānanda Kāśmīraka’s Advaitvabrahmasiddhi, chapter 2 (each
chapter is called mudgaraprahāra),
pp. 101-102.
[16] S. Radhakrishnan (1948 : 280) is of the opinion that what is
common to all these views is that «the soul is only a natural phenomenon».
Hiriyanna (1952: 26) thought that such views were variants of the Cārvākas
(26).
[17] Engels
(1966: 198).
[18] Kāśikā on Aṣṭ
4.4.60 (p. 396).
[19] A nāstika
is the defiler of the Veda: nāstiko
vedanindakaḥ (Manu 2.11).
[20] AC auto-commentary,
p. 334.
[21] SVM,
p. 130.
[22] TRD, p. 300.
[23] See Bhattacharya
(2009b: 227-231).
[24] It may be noted in this connection that the same simile was used in the SKS to uphold the idealist view
(1.2.1.26): «As for instance, a water-bubble is produced in water, grows in
water, is not separate from water, but is bound up in water: so all beings have
the Self for their cause and their object, they are produced by the Self, they
are intimately connected with the Self, they are bound up in the Self».
[25] saṅti paṃca mahabbhūyā ihamege simāhiyā | pudhavī āu teu vā vāu āgāsapaṃcamā ||
(«Some profess [the exclusive belief in] the five gross elements: earth, water,
fire, air and space»). Mbh 12.267.4 also
mentions «five great elements» (mahābhūtāni
pañceti) in relation to a similar, if not the same, doctrine.
[26] Udbhaṭa, who composed a
rather unusual commentary on the Cārvākasūtra
(now lost), was a Kashmirian as was his arch opponent, Jayanta, author of the NM.
[27] In another translation (or rather
a prose adaptation), the distinction between the bhūtavādins and the laukāyatikas
is somewhat differently explained: «The Bhūta-vādīs
hold that the world is formed out of the five elements alone, without any
divine intervention. We agree with the Lokāyata, the sage said, and believe
that when the elements combined together, a material and a spirit come into
existence. That is all. We believe that perception alone is our means of
knowledge and nothing else. We recognise only one birth and we know that our
joys and pains end on earth with this one life» (Holmstörm, 1996: 170).
[28] This
paraphrase has been translated into English by N. Vanamamalai (1973: 36). The
commentator further says (Ibidem) that there were three such schools: Bhūtavāda, Lokāyata and Sarvaka
(meaning Cārvāka?). If so, the commentator must have flourished after the
eighth century, for the name, Cārvāka, as has been said before, does not occur
in the context of philosophy before then.
[29] See
Bhattacharya (2009b: 79, 87; fragment I.5).
[30] The KUp, as said before, is perhaps the
first attempt to refute the heretical idea, namely, denial of the after-world.
There is, however, no reference to hell in the KUp (as Whitney, 1890: 92) so perceptively noted); the deniers of the
after-world are forced to repeated redeath and subsequent rebirth on earth. It
is in Mbh 12.146.18 that we read of
the abode of Yama (yamakṣaya) where the messengers of Yama (yamadūtas) bring back the deniers of the
other-world; such sinners have to stay there for a while before they are sent
back to earth. The elaborate picture of hell with its eighty four pits (kuṇḍas) developed later, mainly in the
Purāṇas.
[31] Mookerjee (1935: 368-369), Dasgupta (1975: 539),
Gangopadhyaya (1984: 32, 55 note 1, 56 note 4, 66 note 51), Chattopadhyaya
(1989: 52) and Bhattacharya (2010b: 28-30).
[32] Bhattacharya (2009b: 78, 86; aphorism I.2).
[33] Bhattacharya (Ibidem:
78-79, 86; aphorisms I.1-3).
[34] See SDS, pp. 12-13.
[35] For
a study of the doctrine of svabhāva,
see Bhattacharya (2012).
[36] For
sources see Bhattacharya (2009: 57-58) and (2010b: 28-30).
Acknowledgements: Amitava Bhattacharyya, T. Seshasayee, Krishna Del Toso.
Acknowledgements: Amitava Bhattacharyya, T. Seshasayee, Krishna Del Toso.
This
essay was first published Esercizi
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