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In the west and also in the popular understanding of today’s urban east, Indians are historically regarded as “thinkers” and not “doers”. The most acceptable stereotype of an Indian is that he or she is inherently mystic and religious (and capable of doing math and computers and more recent addition to the list is that he or she is the call center person who is most ruthlessly taking away job opportunities from the first world). This scribe will not try to refute any of these stereotypes in this humble “reading” exercise. However he will most definitely attempt to expose an ancient school of materialism that originated and influenced the socio economic developments in India. He will also try to indicate the positive “doing” inspired by Indian materialism and its relation with the developments in the history of society and politics and science and trade in the subcontinent and how its rise and fall roughly corresponded with the rise and fall of strength of the civilization.
SOME CONSIDERATIONS (BACK DROP)
The orientation of this reading is important both for the author and the reader. I will present this orientation in the form of excerpts from different sources. Broadly speaking, I adhere to dialectical materialism throughout this reading (the reason is out of the scope of this essay).
As far as idealist (anti “doing” so to say) approaches are concerned,
“The philosophical view which arose to condemn and reject life could only have been the result of the philosophical pursuit turning away from life itself. As with the development of slavery in ancient Greece, so also in the Upanishadic India, the lofty contempt for the material world with its ever- shifting phenomena was the result of the philosophical enquiry taking free flight into the realm of ‘pure reason’, or ‘pure knowledge’, i.e. knowledge only when a section of the community, living on the surplus produced by another, withdrew itself from the responsibilities of direct manual labour, and therefore, from reality of the material world, for the process of labour alone can exercise a sense of objective coercion on conscious theory. Theory, in other words, was divorced from practice and became ‘pure theory’, the things thought of became mere ideas and thus the knower, the subject, sought to emancipate itself from the inhibitions of the known or the object, and a look at the latter as but products of ignorance or avidya.”1
However
“The artisans and other sections of the working people skilled in one or another area of practical activity were materialists when dealing with the phenomena and problems of their work. But the moment they go over to the general problems of social life, they had to become votaries fo the dominant ideology-the philosophy of life after death, the soul, Moksha2 and so on. It is out of skilled artisans, practitioners of occupations like medicine, etc., that a distinct materialist trend in philosophy originated. Those who followed this trend had to be materialist in their interpretations of problems connected with their art or professions. But, being dominated by the ideology of the ruling class-Varna-caste-which was idealistic in essence, they had to submit themselves to idealism.”3
The artisan’s philosophical submission was more obvious in Indian scenario. The word religion does not translate into Dharma though they are varty regarded as synonymous. Dharma encompasses the length and breadth of life including social, political, economic and biological practices undertaken by an individual. In fact,
“The spokesmen of traditional Indian politics were above all our law-givers whose writings are generally called the Dharmasastra. What these lawmakers were basically concerned with was of course the safety of a social structure which they considered as the ideal one. Such a social structure generally goes by the name Varnasrama, by which is meant a society in which the conduct of everybody must be regulated by the caste in which he or she is born as also by the stage of life reached by every one.4 Concretely however, it stood for the norm of a society in which a minority of the population-consisting of nobles, priests and traders-were entitled to all material privileges, though in varying degrees. The rest of the people which could only mean the direct producers whose surplus products alone could create the material benefits for the dwijas, was dumped under the general category called Sudras. And the lawmakers insisted that these direct producers were entitled to have nothing more than was essential to keep themselves alive. Their only duty was to serve the upper strata of society, because the creator himself brought them into being exclusively for this specific purpose.” 5
Since the concept of Sudra (the servant caste) was integrated in the corpus of dharma that in turn included society, culture, economy and politics it became increasingly difficult for the artisans to philosophically win over the idealism of the ruling class. Thus,
“Out of the ranks of the overwhelming majority of people who engaged themselves in physical labour-artisans and others-arose the various schools of materialism. This class as a whole and the ideological representatives of this class however, were completely at the mercy of the idealist philosophers. It was therefore, an unequal battle between the toiling people who were inherently materialistic in outlook and those who lorded it over them with their idealistic philosophy. The battle between the Buddhists and the Vedantins6 was in fact the final engagement between the two forces and Shankara was the commander-in-chief of the idealists in that battle in its last stages. The defeat administered to the Buddhist materialists was therefore the victory of the dominant upper castes whose theoreticians championed idealism. 7
When we compare Europe and India we see that it was the all encompassing dharma that made the difference between the two situations. So,
“While India after the defeat of the materialists at the hands of the idealists was thus stagnant, Europe which had earlier been behind India in ancient days was going through fundamental socio-cultural transformation. The eminent scientist and historian of science, J.D. Barnal, refers to the European Renaissance as having ‘healed, though only partially, the breach between aristocratic theory and plebeian practice’ (Chattopadhyaya, P. 101).” 8
Thus Europe appeared as the seat of Industrial Revolution in the course of time and India slided in the dark abyss of stagnation. Materialism thus acted as the deciding factor in the shaping of the history of the world. Rightly so,
“Considering that this happened to a country which, once again to quote Marx, ‘has been the source of our (Europeans’) languages, our religion’, the question naturally arises: why and how did our country fall from its brilliant antiquity to the degradation of pre-British days? The answer is that the defeat of the oppressed castes at the hands of the Brahminic overlordship, of materialism by the idealism, constituted the beginning of the fall of India’s civilisation and culture which in the end led to the loss of national independence.” 9
Finally,
“The battle of the two philosophical schools ended in the defeat of one (the materialists) and the domination of the other. This battle however, was an unequal one, the full force of the socio-political establishment (the regime of caste comination) being made use of in favour of the idealist and against the materialist school. The victor and the vanquished in our country were not two philosophies in the abstract but two social classes-the dominant and oppressed castes-using the two philosophies as weapons in their arsenal. The victory of Shankara and his philosophy therefore was the victory of the Brahmin and other dominant castes, the defeat of the rest of Indian society.” 10
With this background information (and understanding) we will investigate the Cārvāka School of Philosophy which may be regarded as one of the gems of Indian materialism, a precursor to rise of the first Binomial Theorem, the first Fibonacci Numbers, the first Plastic Surgery and the first Binary Operations that the human intelligence ever mastered under the sun.
ORIGIN
One eminent Indologist, Rhys Davids, has offered the theory-too generally ignored-that Lokayata was used c. 500 B. c. in a complimentary reference to a branch of Brahman learn- ing and meaning primarily “nature lore”. This teaching (Loka- yata), he goes on to say, was deemed inferior to Vedic learning but had admitted practical value for the Indian student. There was no handbook of this lore nor any special school in which to study it, yet portions were preserved in the orthodox Ch:andogya 3 in connection with interesting reflections on the nature of the sun’s rays. In time, however, this particular lore became unac- ceptable in priestly circles and encountered vigorous opposition, somewhat as Roger Bacon’s experiments were met by the Scho- lastics. The term Lokayata came later still to signify logical quib- bling or debate and was so employed by the Brahmans themselves with reference to what they, in the main, condemned. As the Lokayata doctrines and practices came into steadily growing disrepute, the name of Carvaka, the Epic villain, was attached to them in token of their popular character.
Evidence
1. “Understand, intelligent (prince), that no one exists hereafter; regard only that which is an object of perception, and cast behind your back whatever is beyond the reach of your senses.”[R Rdmayana, Ayodhyakanda, Sect. 108, Ed. Schlegel, quoted in J. Muir, "Materialism" in JRAS 1st Ser. XIX, pp. 305-6. ] Here is materialism as a more definite, coherent doctrine, not merely a skeptical denial of the existence of Vedic deities and the efficacy of sacrifice, but a careful marshalling of argument for a heretical view which has its own positive convictions. This passage is instructive in two different ways: first, it offers what seems to be the earliest definite statement of materialistic views which appears in the whole of Indian thought; second, the terms Lokayata and Carvaka are not applied to these views.
2. Furthermore, though the names do not occur here where we might naturally expect them, yet the word Lokayata appears in another section of the Ramayana with a distinctive meaning which is quite different from the classical. In this passage the Lokayatas are character- ized as “clever in useless things”, quibblers, disputers and the like [Rarnyanya, Gorresio ed. II, 109: 29 quoted in Rhys-Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha, vol. 2, p. 169. ]
3. The Mahabharata contains two passages of some significance for tracing the historical development of materialism. The first of these contemptuously remarks:, “Some fools, accom- plished in the science of logic, deny the existence of the soul.” 10 The second gives the story of Carvaka the wicked Brahman who, when king Yudhisthira entered a city in triumph, stepped for- ward with the effrontery to deliver a polemic against the king, insulting him on behalf of the priests assembled. The Brahmans in turn set up a loud outcry repudiating the wicked Carvaika; suddenly recognizing the miscreant as a Raksasa, they uttered the syllable AUM, upon which the bold speaker was killed on the spot “like a tree with all its sprouts blasted by the thunder of Indra.”
4. The earliest unmistakable reference to the word Lokayata which denotes genuine materialist belief appears, strangely enough, in a Buddhist work by gantaraksita, the philosopher and critic of the 8th century A. D. He lived a generation or so before Safnkara and gave a good deal of his attention to materialistic philosophy. One section of his work Tattvasamhgraha is called Lokcyataparnks d and contains a somewhat lengthy exposition of materialistic belief with a careful refutation of the same. And from this time on, materi- alism and its designation Lokayata appear together, the chief refer- ence being in Sarhkara.11
EPISTEMOLOGY
We find two senses in which the word Pramana is used in ancient Indian philosophical literature.
(1) According to one usage, pramana is a means or instrument or source of true cognition. But in this sense, pramana need not necessarily yield true cognition. What is a means of true cognition may also function occasionally as a means of false cognition. Let us call this sense the instrumental sense of ‘pramana’.
(2)According to the other usage, pramana means an authoritative means of knowledge or an authority. In this sense pramana is that means or source of knowledge which always yields true cognition and true cognition alone. Consequently pramana can serve as a justifying ground for knowledge. Let us call this second sense the authoritative sense of ‘pramana’.
The Carvaka approach to pramanas can be restated in the light of the distinction above, as follows:
(a) Pratyaksa is the only pramana in the authoritative sense.
This defense of pratvaksa as the only authentic source of knowledge needs further qualification. Pratyaksa has been classified into nirvikalpaka and savikalpaka (which roughly mean nonjudgmental and judgmental, respectively) by Buddhists and others. Of these two, nonjudgmental perception is truly the source of immediate cognition. One cannot be as certain about judgmental perception as one can be about nonjudg- mental perception. Thus the Carvaka defense of pratyaksa as the only pramana (in the authoritative sense) has to be qualified and revised in the light of the distinction between savikalpaka and nirvikalpaka pratyaksa.
(b) A certain kind of anumana is also pramana, but only in the instru- mental sense.
Which kind of anumana is pramana according to the Carvakas, although in the weaker sense of the term pramana? Here two different proposals are suggested by the Carvakas. We will consider each one, separately.
I. First Proposal: Empirically testable Anumana Is Pramana
Jayantabhatta, in his Nyayamaijari, refers to the view that anumana is of two kinds: utpannapratiti and utpadyaprat?t UtpannapratTti means that which is experienced in the past, and utpadyapratTti means that which is yet to be experienced
When an object of anumana, or rather an object of the same kind as an object of anumana, is already the object of one’s experience, the anumana is called utpannapratTti. Consequently the re- sult of such an anumana is empirically testable, at least in principle.
When, on the contrary, the object of anumana (rather, an object of the same kind as the object of anumana) is not something we have already experienced, but the ‘experi- ence’ of it (in the broader sense) is supposed to be generated through the anumana itself, the anumana is called utpadyapratTti.
Now the Carvaka position on anumana as pramana can be restated as follows: empirically testable anumana is pramana in the instrumental sense of the term pramana, but anumana which is not so testable is not pramana even in the instrumental sense.
Carvakas, on the other hand, are suggesting that perception may give us certain knowledge; anumana of the empirically testable (utpannapratTti, or drsta in Vaisesika terms) kind can give us only probable cognition, which may turn out to be true or false after investigation; but anumana of the empirically nontestable kind (utpadyapratTti, or samanyatodrsta in Vaisesika terms) does not give us any ‘cognition’ worth the name, and hence the question of its truth or falsehood does not arise. This brings us to an epistemological model which closely resembles that of some logical positivists. This model excludes samanyatodrsta -anumanas from the sphere of pramanas because they involve a leap from empirical to transcendent and are therefore type-crossing inferences. Consequently, it excludes the so-called metaphysical knowledge from the sphere of knowledge proper.
But all educated Carvakas do not seem to accept this model, perhaps along with inferences for God, soul, and so forth, it also excludes inferences for the existence of material objects, other persons, space, time, and so forth from the sphere of knowledge proper. Although Carvakas are opposed to otherworldly metaphysical beliefs, they do not seem to be opposed to the metaphysics of common sense. This brings us to another proposal regarding the status of anumana suggested by the Carvakas.
II. Second Proposal: Anumana Which Does Not Transgress the Worldly Framework Is Pramana
By lokaprasiddha-anumana, Carvakas seem to mean an inference which is acceptable within the framework of our mundane life. This framework of mundane life could be explained by referring to some beliefs basic to our life in this world: for example, our belief in the existence of material objects, the existence of other persons, and so forth. Naturally the inferences in the justification of such beliefs could be called lokaprasiddha-anumanas. According to this proposal, however, lokaprasiddha-anumanas are pramana in the instrumental sense, though they may not be so in the authoritative sense. Here a question may arise: how are such inferences to be treated as pramana, even in the instrumental sense, if some of them are clear cases of type-crossing because they involve a leap from empirical to metaphys- ical? Carvakas proposing this model of anumana as pramana could per- haps answer this question as follows. Although some such inferences involve a leap from empirical to metaphysical, both these ‘empirical’ and ‘metaphysical’ as asserted in lokaprasiddha-anumana are consistent with what may be called the commonsense view of the world. The kind of leap that should be avoided in an inference is not from empirical to metaphysical but from common- sensical worldly metaphysics to otherworldly metaphysical nonsense.
This is quite consistent with the Carvaka approach to purusarthas according to which artha and kama, understood as the mundane goals, are the major or the only purusarthas, and dharma and moksa are significant only if interpreted within the worldly framework that is, if they are explainable in terms of or reducible to artha and kama as understood above.
The lokaprasiddha- anumana of this classification is broader than the utpannapratTti-anumana or drsta-anumana of the earlier classification. But the question remains as to what would be the nature of that anumana which is lokaprasiddha but not drsta; and how do we conceive of its nature?
We can arrive at the notion of this special type of lokaprasiddha- anumana, I think, in the following way. On the one hand Carvakas begin their epistemological enterprise by accepting pratyaksa as authority. Consequently what is basically given to us is the data of nirvikalpaka pratyaksa. On the other hand, Carvakas have a strong theoretical and practical commitment to our mundane life in this world. So at least a broad framework of our life in this world is also something that is ‘given’ according to the Carvakas. But that the latter is given is more a part of pragmatic necessity than epistemic necessity for them. Now the Carvakas would say that most of our commonsense beliefs do follow from this given framework, which cannot be explained satisfactorily without accepting them. This is essentially the form of arthapatti, the essence of which is anyatha-anupapatti. I am suggesting that the Carvaka notion of lokaprasiddha-anumana can be elucidated by regard- ing arthapatti to be a special kind of it. What is the essence of arthapatti? We can say that it is ‘anyatha- anupapatti’ (‘nonexplanability otherwise’). According to this notion the argument from arthapatti has to satisfy two conditions: (1) it should be used for satisfactorily explaining some object, say A, which is acceptable, and (2) it should show that the object A can be explained satisfactorily only by accepting the other object, say B (which is the object of arthapatti), and not without accepting it. (In other words accepting A should force us to accept B on account of some explanatory necessity.)
Points of Difference with Other Schools
1. The famous objection of Naiyayikas and others is that if Carvakas accept only pratyaksa as pramana, then they cannot even communi- cate this view to others, because communication involves the capac- ity to know the contention and the understanding that the audience possesses. But this amounts to the knowledge of other minds, which is not possible solely with pratyaksa.
2. The famous objection of Naiyayikas and others is that if Carvakas accept only pratyaksa as pramana, then they cannot even communi- cate this view to others, because communication involves the capac- ity to know the contention and the understanding that the audience possesses. But this amounts to the knowledge of other minds, which is not possible solely with pratyaksa. 12
1Indian Philosophy: A Popular Introduction, People’s Publishing House, 1986, pp. 85-86
2Salvation
3Namboodiripad, E.M. S. . “Adi Sankara and His Philosophy: A Marxist View.” Social Scientist Vol. 17, No. 1/2(1989): 3-12.
4Four varnas (roughly translating into caste) in which the population was divided into were Brahmanas (teachers, healers and priests), Kshatriyas (protectors, warriors and kings), Vaishyas (artisans, peasants and traders) and Sudras (the non aryans who were defeated and inducted in the Aryan system; they were the laborers and servants of the rest of the three castes). Four Ashramas (roughly translating into hermitage) in which the time span of life was divided into were Brahmacharya (life of a bachelor and learner), Garhastha (life of a house holder), Vanaprastha (life of forest), Sanyas (life of complete renunciation and dedication to know self/truth). The caste system was not rigid in the beginning. It roughly corresponded with the occupation of the individual and hence was interchangable. It became heridatory afterwords.
5Indian Philosophy: A Popular Introduction, People’s Publishing House, 1986, pp. 17-18
6Followers of Veda (the idealist Brahmans)
7Namboodiripad, E.M. S. . “Adi Sankara and His Philosophy: A Marxist View.” Social Scientist Vol. 17, No. 1/2(1989): 8
8Namboodiripad, E.M. S. . “Adi Sankara and His Philosophy: A Marxist View.” Social Scientist Vol. 17, No. 1/2(1989): 9
9Namboodiripad, E.M. S. . “Adi Sankara and His Philosophy: A Marxist View.” Social Scientist Vol. 17, No. 1/2(1989): 10
10Namboodiripad, E.M. S. . “Adi Sankara and His Philosophy: A Marxist View.” Social Scientist Vol. 17, No. 1/2(1989): 10
11Schermerhorn, R.A.. “When Did Indian Materialism Get Its Distinctive Titles?.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 50(1930): 132-138.
12Gokhale, Pradeep P. . “The Cārvāka Theory of Pramāṇas: A Restatement.” Philosophy East and West Vol. 43, No. 4(Oct., 1993): 675-682.
