Cārvāka Miscellany

Ramkrishna Bhattacharya

The notes propose to throw light on certain
aspects of materialism in ancient India and point out some
longstanding errors that have gone unnoticed. Some links are also sought to be
established between the pre-Cārvāka materialism and the Cārvāka/Lokāyata system that
emerged in or around the sixth/seventh century CE.

I. Max Müller’s faux pas

Modern scholars nowadays seldom
(if at all) refer to Friedrich Max Müller (1823-1900). But to our great-grandfathers
he was a highly respected man, both as an Indologist and as a friend of India. In his
once-celebrated work, The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy (1899), he wrote:
‘The name of Kārvāka [Cārvāka] is clearly
connected with that of Kārva [Cārva] and this is given as a
synonym of Buddha by Bālasāstrin in the [Sanskrit] preface to
his edition of the Kāśikā (p. 2). He is represented as a
teacher of the Lokāyatika or worldwide system, if that is the meaning
originally intended by that word.’1

It is a comic faux pas. Had Max
Müller cared to turn a few pages of the said edition of Kāśikā,
on reaching p. 49 he would have found that the word Buddha (on p.2) is a mere
misprint for buddhi (intelligence). Bala Sastri was simply paraphrasing the
words of Vāmana-Jayāditya, the authors of Kāśikā.
In their explication of Panini’s Astādhyayi, 1.3.36, they had written,
nāyate
cārvi lokāyate,
and explained the sentence as follows: ‘Cārvī is buddhi. Due to his association with it
(intelligence), the teacher, too, is called Cārvī.
He establishes the principles of the Lokāyata-sāstra (the
science of Lokāyata) with the help of reason. Thus, he is respected
and worshipped by his disciples.’2

One, however, cannot be sure
whether the word, lokāyata, here stands for the science of disputation
(vitandāśāstra, as in all Pali and Buddhist Sanskrit works) or the Cārvāka system of
philosophy.3 But the word definitely refers to a
system based on reason.

Max Müller was misled again due
to a further misprint: cārva, a meaningless word, for cārvi,
‘intelligence’. He took cārva to be a namesake of Buddha.

II. The Debt of the Mimāmsā‚ and Nyāya-Vaiśesika
to the Cārvāka

Ember Krishnamacharya, editor of
the editio princeps of Śantaraksita’s Tattvasangraha (eighth century CE),
notices a number of verses that are taken verbatim from Kumārilabhatta’s works
(seventh or eighth century CE).4 Kumārila was a Mīmāmsaka and a staunch opponent of
the Buddhists. The editor, however, failed to notice four verses in Chapter 22
that deal with the Lokāyata. Satkari Mookherjee was the first to point out:
‘The entire argument put in the mouth of the materialist [in Tattvasangraha] is boldly taken mutatis
mutandis from Kumārila’s Śloka-vārtika. The Ślokās from 1865 to 1868 are reproduced
verbatim and Sls. [Śloka-s] 1869 to
1871 are but a summarized version of Kumārila’s Ślokās 59-64 and 69-73, Atmavāda,
S.V. [Slokavartika], pp.703-07 5

Recently Eli Franco has observed,
‘It seems that the most orthodox and the heterodox schools [sc. the Mīmāmsā‚ and the Cārvāka] have
joined forces to criticize the Buddhists…. Yet the question arises whether
these are Mimāmsā arguments
adopted by the Cārvāka or vice versa.6 He takes Kumārila to be the debtor. Santaraksita,
too, knew them to be Cārvāka arguments but found it ‘easier…to quote them in
an already versified form’7 (as done by Kumārila).

Mookherjee also notes that Sriharsa,
a tenth-century Nyāya-Vaiśesika philosopher, ‘employs similar arguments to
prove the impossibility of metempsychosis [= rebirth] in the Buddhist theory of
Soul or rather no-Soul.’8 He further says, ‘We are tempted to believe that Sriharsa
has borrowed his arguments from Kumārila whom he quotes with great respect in
other places.’9

It appears then that both the Mīmāmsā
and the Nyāya-Vaiśesika schools, in their polemics against the Buddhists,
borrowed some of their weapons from the Cārvāka arsenal. Kumārila took them
first and Sriharsa in his turn took them from Kumārila.

III. Cārvāka in a work on poetics

An interesting reference to the Cārvāka
occurs in Locana by Abhinavagupta
(tenth / eleventh century CE). It is a commentary on Anandavardhana’s
influential book (itself a commentary) on poetics, Dhvanyāloka (ninth century CE). Anandavardhana says that words in
poetry have a twofold meaning: the stated one (vācya) and the suggested (pratiyamāna)
one.10 Defending this approach, Abhinavagupta writes that the concept of twofold
meaning is necessary, for ‘discerning critics decide that it (the suggested
meaning) should be the very soul of poetry.’11 Then
he adds: ‘But those whose minds are confused due to its intimate association
with the aspect of “the stated meaning” start doubting its separate existence,
even as the Cārvākas who doubt the separate existence of an entity like the
soul apart from the body.’

The Cārvāka theory of the self
(soul) is that it is inseparable from the body. So long as the body is alive,
consciousness, cognition, etc. are to be found accompanying it. The soul,
unlike what the idealist philosophers say, cannot exist without a substratum,
that is, the body. Abhinavagupta cleverly refers to this concept.

Both Anandavardhana and
Abhinavagupta were Kashmirians. Udbhata Bhatta, a Cārvāka philosopher, also
belonged to Kashmir (if he is the same Udbhata mentioned in Kalhana’s Rājatarangini)12 Abhinavagupta’s
reference to the Cārvākas also disproves Rhys Davids’ view (if further evidence
to disprove it is at all required) that there was no school of thought or a
system of philosophy called the Lokāyata, although all writers from Kumārila
and Sankaracarya to Sayana-Madhava (fourteenth century) use the name, Lokāyata
and Lokāyatika, as “mere hobbyhorses, pegs on which certain writers can hang
the views that they impute to their adversaries, and give them, in doing so, an
odious name.”13

IV. Ajita Kesakambala: A belated
appearance

The earliest verses attributed to
the Cārvāka / Lokāyata are found quoted in two commentaries on a work by the
Buddhist philosopher, Nāgārjuna (second century CE).14 The verses run as
follows:

“Man (purusa) consists of only as much as is within the scope of the senses.
What the vastly learned ones speak of (as true) in but similar to (the
statement): ‘Oh! Blessed one! Look at the footprints of the wolf.’15

‘Oh! the fair one, possessing
beautiful eyes! 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 [of the four natural elements, namely, earth, air,
fire and water].’ ”16

The story behind these verses has
been told by the commentators of the Haribhadra’s Sad-darsana-samuccaya.17

What has so far gone unnoticed is
that in their commentaries on Nāgārjuna’s Mādhyamaka-sāstra,
Buddhapalita (fifth century CE), Bhavaviveka (fifth / sixth century) and
Candrakirti (sixth / seventh century) refer to the materialist doctrine18 but,
instead of referring to any Cārvāka aphorism or verse, all of them go back to
the words of Ajita Kesakambala, a senior contemporary of the Buddha. Thus we have
the Sanskrit version of the beginning of a passage that is attributed to Ajita
in a Pali Sutta: ‘This world does not
exist, the other world does not exist. There is no effect of good and evil
deeds, there is no result. There is no self-created being, etc.’19

The passage needs some
explanation. The first sentence does not mean that Ajita denies the reality of
this world. It simply suggests that performance of religious duties yields no
result either in this world or in the next. That is to say, contrary to the
assurance given in the Dharmasastras, sacrifices, etc. ensure neither wealth
and wellbeing in this world (abhyudaya)
nor the summum bonum, liberation (nihsreyasa).20

In the last sentence the words
translated as ‘self-created being’ are sattva
upapāduka in the original. ‘According to Buddhist belief, living beings are
divided by their mode of birth into four classes: those born of the egg such as
birds, some snakes, etc.; those born of moist heat such as insects, etc.; those
born of the womb such as mammals and men; and those born of themselves such as
gods, Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Cakravartins, hell-dwellers, etc.’21

In short, then, Ajita denies the
existence of all gods as well as the efficacy of performing rituals.

Buddhapalita and others elected
to go back to the earlier, proto-materialist doctrine rather than the doctrine
that developed the materialist view anew.22

V. Tracing an Unidentified Verse

It has been shown that the Visnudharmottara Mahāpurāna is the
source of the famous verse attributed to the Cārvākas, ‘So long as there is
life, live happily’ (yavaj jivam sukham
jivet), etc.23 A part of this couplet was changed by Sāyana-Mādhava, the
Vedantin (fourteenth century) to read: ‘Drink clarified butter (even) by
borrowing’ (rnam krtva ghrtam pivet)
while in all other sources (both before and after Sayana Madhava) it reads:
‘Nothing is beyond the reach of death’ (nāsti
mrtyor agocarah). In the Mahāpurāna,
the couple of lines, however, does not constitute a stanza (sloka) by itself. They are the second
and first lines of two consecutive stanzas.24

Another such couple of lines has
been quoted from the same source (Visnudharmottara
Mahāpurāna) in three later works.25 The couplet, as before, originally
formed the second and first lines of two consecutive stanzas. They run as
follows:

‘Penances are only various forms
of torment, and abstinence in merely depriving oneself of the pleasure of life.
The rituals of agnihotra, etc. appear only to be child’s play.’26

It cannot be ascertained whether
the author of the Visnudharmottara Māhapurāna
quoted it from another source (oral or written) or composed the lines himself.
In any case, the Cārvāka view seems to have been reflected in these lines
although the author of the Mahāpurāna
was as much opposed to materialism as the later writers who quoted these lines.

VI. Bhāguri or Bhāgurī?

B. N. Puri in his study on
Patañjali (second century CE) writes:

The Lokāyatas were not unknown in
that period. Patañjali refers to Bhaguri as a famous exponent of this school
who provided specimens of the Lokāyata doctrines according to his views (varnikā Bhāguri Lokāyatasya), or way of
life (vārtika Bhāguri lokāyatsya). 27

On the basis of this
interpretation Puri concludes: “The name of the founder of this school – Cārvāka
is not mentioned by the Bhasyakara‚ra (sc. Patañjali), but his philosophy was well-known.”

It is rather odd that Puri did
not notice that the name is not Bhaguri, but Bhaguri„ in Kielhorn’s edition as
also in the two commentaries by Kaiyata and Nagesabhatta, who explain the word as
tikāvisesah and Lokāyatasāstrasya vyākhyanarupo granthaviseseah, a commentary on
the Lokāyatasāstra.28

Monier-Williams mentions both Bhaguri
and Bhaguri, the first, meaning the name of a person, the second, of a work. So
there is no reason to confuse the two, yet Puri and many others have made this
mistake. 29

Incidentally it may be observed
that this Lokāyatasastra most probably is not a book of the Cārvāka/Lokāyata
school but rather a work of the art and science of disputation, or tarkasāstra, noted in the Kautiliya Arthasāstra.30

1. Varanasi:
   The Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office, 1971 reprint of the second
   posthumous edition of 1903, p. 99. Max Müller refers to Kāśikā by Vāmana-Jayāditya, ed.
   Bāla Śāstri [Varanasi:
   Medical Hall, 1898]. 

2. Since Bāla Śāstri’s edition is not easily available,
   readers may consult any available edition of Kāśikā, for example, the one edited by Nārāyana Misra
   (Varanasi: Chowkhamba, 1969) or another ed. Raghuvir Vedālankar (Delhi:
   Prācyavidyāpratisthānam, 1997). See also V. S. Agarwal, Indian as known to Panini, Lucknow: University
   of Lucknow, 1953, p.
   393. 

3. See Ramkrishna Bhattacharya, ‘On Lokāyata and Lokāyatana
   in Buddhist Sanskrit’, Annals of the
   Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Vol. LXXIX, 1998, pp. 231-235
   and ‘The Significance of Lokāyata in Pali’, Journal of the Department of Pali, University of Calcutta,
   Vol. 10, 2000, pp. 3946. See also ‘Lokāyata and Lokāyatana in Sanskrit
   Dictionaries’, Indian Skeptic,
   Vol. 12, No.11, March 2000, pp. 15-18. All are now included in my Studies
   on the Cārvāka/Lokāyata, Firenze: Societa
   Editrice Fiorentina, 2009. 

4. Baroda:
   Oriental Institute, 1926, Vol. 2, Appendixes, pp. 8397. The text has been
   translated into English by Ganganath Jha, published by the same publisher
   in 193739. Both the text and translation have been reprinted in 1968 and
   1986 respectively (the latter has been brought out by Motilal Banasridass
   (MLBD), Delhi).
   Pandit Dvarikadasa Shastri has also published the text (Varanasi: Bauddha
   Vihāra, 1968, reprinted in 1981). The number of verses is one short of the
   Baroda
   edition. 

5. The Buddhist
   Philosophy of Universal Flux, Calcutta:
   University of Calcutta, 1935, p. 204 n2 (reprinted by MLBD, Delhi, 1975). 

6. Dharmakirti on
   Compassion and Rebirth, Wien (Vienna):
   Arbeitkreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien. Universität Wien,
   1997, p. 100. 

7. Ibid, p. 101. 

8. Mookherjee (n5), p. 204 n2. 

9. Ibid. 

10. Dhvanyāloka and
    Locana, ed. Kuppuswamy Sastri and others, Madras: The Kuppuswamy Sastri Research
    Institute, 1944, Uddyota ONE, pp. 88-89. 

11. Ibid. I have quoted from the translation by K.
    Krishnamoorthy (with some modifications). See Abhinavagupta’s Dhvanyāloka-Locana, New Delhi: Mahendra
    Lachmandas Publications, 1988, pp. 98-99. 

12. See ‘Udbhata’, New
    Catalogus Catalogorum. Vol. Two, ed. V. Raghavan, Madras:
    University
    of Madras, 1966, p.
    31, referring to Rājatarangini,
    4. 495. 

13. T. W. Rhys Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha, Vol. 1, Oxford, 1899, p. 166. C. Bendall pointed
    out in 1900 that Rhys Davids was mistaken in saying so (Athenaeum, 30 June, 1900). 

14. The Madhyamakaśāstra
    of Nāgārjuna with Akutobhaya, an
    auto-commentary by Nāgārjuna, Madhyamakavrtti
    by Buddhapālita, Prajñāpradipa
    by Bhāvaviveka, and Prasannapadāvrtti
    by Candrakirti, ed. Raghunath Pandeya, Delhi: MLBD, in two vols., 1988-89. The
    two commentaries mentioned in the text refer to the last two. 

15. Ibid., Vol. 2, pp. 3 (on 16. 1), 6465 (on 18.6).
    Bhāvaviveka alone quotes both, Candrakirti only the first one. It is to be
    regretted that Pandeya, the editor of the work, while restoring the first
    verse in Bhāvaviveka’s commentary from its Tibetan translation to Sanskrit
    (the original text is lost) wrote loko’yam
    instead of puruso. This is
    totally unwarranted. The Tibetan version has skyes-bu (203 b8 and 232 b6)
    which cannot but be purusah. 

16. This verse is also found (with minor variants) in
    Haribhadra’s Sad-darsana-samuccaya
    (v. 82), Silanka’s commentaries on the Acaranga
    and Sutra-krtangasutra-s, and
    Rajasekharasuri’s Sad-darsana-samuccaya. 

17. Parable of the Wolf’s Footprints’, Indian Skeptic,
    Vo,. 12, May 1999, pp. 3136. and its revised and enlarged version in Jain
    Journal, 36: 3 (January 2002), pp. 13448.The latter is now included in my
    Studies on the Cārvāka/Lokāyata,
    Firenze: Societa Editrice Fiorentina,
    2009. 

18. See Madhyamakasastra
    (n14), Vol. 2, pp. 60, 6364, 66 (on 18. 57). 

19. Sāmañña-phala-sutta’, Digha Nikāya, ed. J. Kashyap, Patna: Pali Publication Board (Bihar
    Government). Part I. 1958, p. 48. In the Pali Sutta there is another clause
    before the last one: ‘There is no father, there is no mother’ which is
    omitted by Buddhapālita and others. 

20. A detailed discussion will be found in my ‘Ajita
    Kesakambala: Nihilist or Materialist?’ The
    Journal of the Asiatic Society, Vol. XLI, No. 1, 1999, pp. 7483. It
    is included in my Studies on the
    Cārvāka/Lokāyata, Societa Editrice Fiorentina, Firenze,
    2009. 

21. Claus Vogel, The
    Teachings of the Six Heretics, Wiesbaden:
    Franz Steiner, 1970, p. 21 n9. Vogal refers to Nāgārjuna’s Dharmasamgraha and anon., Mahabutpatti as his authorities.
    For a different interpretation of the term, upapaduka, see Graeme Macqueen, A Study of the Sramanyaphala-sutra, Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1988, p.
    39 n65. 

22. No Cārvāka/Lokāyata fragment so far available echoes
    the words of Ajita as found in the Pali Sutta. It strengthens the view that the Cārvāka/Lokāyata did
    not originate from Ajita’s circle in the fifth century BCE but developed
    later independently. There is no evidence to support the continuity of the
    materialist tradition from Ajita to the compilation of the Cārvāka-sutra (or the Paurandarasutra). Erich Frauwallner,
    too, has made a distinction between ‘The oldest materialist doctrines’
    (represented in his opinion by Purana, Ajita and Kakuda) and ‘The Lokāyata
    System’ (which, he believes, arose in the pre-Christian period, founded
    by Cārvāka). See his History of Indian
    Philosophy, Delhi:
    MLBD, Vol. 2, 1997, pp. 219221. Eli Franco and Karin Preisendanz have
    followed him in this regard in their article on the Indian
    School of materialism in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
    ed. Edward Craig, London:
    Routledge, 1998, Vol. 6, p. 179 (‘Early materialists’ and ‘The classical
    materialistic philosophy’). 

23. See my article, “ rnam krtva ghrtam pibet’—Who said
    this?”, Journal of Indian Council of
    Philosophical Research, Vol. XIV, No. 1, September-December, 1996,
    pp. 17074. For some additional sources see ibid., Vol. XVII, No.1, Sept.-Dec.,
    1999, p. 76. This is now included in my Studies on the Cārvāka/Lokāyata, Firenze:
    Societa Editrice Fiorentina, 2009. 

24. Visnudharmottara
    Mahapurana, I. 108. 18cd-19ab. Bombay: Ksemaraja
    Srikrishnadasa, Saka 1834, f. 70. 

25. See Haribhadra, Lokatattvanirnaya,
    Ahmedabad: Sri Hamsavijayaji Jain Free Library, Vikramasamvat 1978, verse
    34, f. 25a (reads bhogavañcanah
    (sic!) in the second pada);
    Jayantabhatta, Agamatambara,
    III. 9, eds. V. Raghavan and Anantalal Thakur, Darbhanga: Mithila
    Vidyapith, 1964, p. 57 (reads –vañcanam)
    and Gunaratna, Tarka-rahasya-dipika‚,
    ed. Luigi Siali, Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 19051914, p. 302, verse 1
    (misprinted as 2) (reads yatna-for yatana, samgama for samyama
    and vañcana). The verse
    originally occurs in the Visnudharmottara
    Mahapurana (n24 above), I. 108. 14cd-15ab,
    p. 70. 

26. I quote the translation from Cārvāka/Lokāyata ed. Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya in
    collaboration with Mrinal Kanti Gangopadhyaya, New Delhi: Indian Council of
    Philosophical Research, 1990, p. 269. 

27. B. N. Puri, India in the Time of Patañjali, New Delhi: Mushiram
    Manoharlal, 1990, p. 178. 

28. F. Kielhorn (ed.), The Vyakarana-mahabhasya of Patañjali, Vol. III, Bombay, 1909, p. 325-326
    (on Astadhyayi 7. 3. 45 (7),
    (8)); Vyakaranamahabhasya with
    Kaiyata’s Pradipa and Nagesabhatta’s Uddyota, Part III, Delhi: MLBD, 1967,
    p.210. 

29. Monier Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, (1899), Delhi: MLBD, 2002, p. 752, column 1,
    bottom. 

30. The Kautiliya
    Arthasastra, Part I, ed. R. P. Kangle, Bombay:
    University
    of Bombay, 1965,
    1.2.10. For a detailed discussion, see Ramkrishna Bhattacharya, Studies on
    the Cārvāka/Lokāyata, Firenze: Societa
    Editrice Fiorentina, 2009, pp. 131-36.