1. Dissolution of Vedic Religion and Speculative Heresy

In India also, the dissatisfaction with the Vedic natural religion gave rise to speculations about the origin of things. Some of the earlier Upaniṣads are fragmentary records of those speculations. But for reasons stated in a preceding chapter, early Indian speculations about the origin of things developed directly into metaphysics and a precarious form of monotheistic religion. Yet, towards the close of the misty Vedic era, approximately about the 7th or 8th century BCE, there rose thinkers who represented distinct materialist tendencies. The teachings of those early speculative rebels are almost completely lost. Only the general drift of the currents of their thought can be approximately inferred from the works of their orthodox opponents. There is, however, ample evidence to conclude that the two earlier systems of Hindu philosophy—Vaiśeṣika and Sāṃkhya—were the positive outcome of the speculations recorded fragmentarily and rather enigmatically in the earlier Upaniṣads. The Vedic society was in the process of dissolution. The pastoral tribal organization, under priestly domination, was buttressed ideologically on the natural religion of the Vedas. The ideology of the forces making for its dissolution was expressed by the philosophers who challenged the authority of the gods by trying to explain the being and becoming of the world in a rationalist and materialist way.

All the existing schools of philosophy mention earlier thinkers as “heretics” or “nihilists.” The former had denied the authority of the Vedas; the latter doubted if anything existed at all. According to the Sāṃkhyas, the “nihilists” held: “Since nothing really exists, except thought, neither does bondage exist; just as the things of a dream have no real existence. Therefore, it (bondage) has no cause; for it is absolutely false. The reality is a void. What is, perishes, because to perish is the habit of things. The void alone is the reality. Since everything that exists, perishes, and that which is perishable is false, as in a dream, bondage has merely a momentary existence, is phenomenal, and not real. Therefore, who can be bound by that? Nothing continues after quitting its own nature; therefore, nothing could continue in existence, if it ceased to perish (that is, ceased to have its nature).”

2. Nihilism and Rationalist Currents in Early Upanishads

From such fragmentary records, it is very difficult to reconstruct the whole system. But to do so obviously is essential for the composition of a complete history of ancient Indian thought. For the moment, the fragmentary evidence clearly proves that the speculative efforts made to outgrow the childishness of the Vedic natural religion did not directly develop into the metaphysical conceptions recorded in the existing Upaniṣads. There was a distinct tendency of development in the opposite direction. Not only was the authority of the Vedas boldly challenged, but the earlier forms of metaphysical thought were subjected to ridicule, and the denial of the gods or supernatural agencies was stretched to the logical conclusion of denying the existence of everything since this latter depended on the existence of imaginary metaphysical entities.

The Upaniṣads record not only strands of rationalist, naturalist, and agnostic thought, but also out-and-out atheism and materialism. At least one of the main eighteen books is entirely devoted to an exposition of rationalist and naturalist thinking and the most outspoken heretical views. It denies the existence of God and soul; it holds that nothing but matter exists, and that there is no other world beyond this world. Its thesis can be summarized as follows:

“There is no incarnation, no God, no heaven, no hell; all traditional religious literature is the work of conceited fools; nature, the originator, and time, the destroyer, are the rulers of things, and take no account of virtue or vice, in awarding happiness or misery to men; people deluded by flowery speeches cling to God’s temples and priests when, in reality, there is no difference between Viṣṇu and a dog.” ^[1]

The origin of the naturalist and sceptic thought, developed in some of the major Upaniṣads, indeed, can be traced even in the Ṛgveda; for instance, the Creation Hymn which concludes the dialogue between the parents of mankind—the twin brother and sister, Yama and Yamī.

The Vedas themselves also furnish the evidence of heretical naturalist thought growing already in the Vedic time. There are Vedic hymns which refer to heretics and unbelievers. They evidently were the pioneers of the revolt against the natural religion and as such forefathers of Indian philosophy. As in ancient Greece, so in India also, the first attempts of human intellect to explain nature in natural terms gave birth to philosophy; that means, in India also originally philosophy was materialism. The Vedas and the early Upaniṣads refer to the svabhāvavādins (naturalists) and their doctrines. They disputed the reality of the gods of natural religion and scoffed at the pretensions of the priests. From the scant references made only to refute them, it can be inferred that those early pioneers of Indian philosophy were empiricists; they held that perception was the only source of knowledge as well as the only reliable evidence. Therefore they were called dārśanikas, and the term subsequently came to mean philosopher. The Sanskrit word darśana means perception. The authorship of the Lokāyata Darśana, the earliest Indian philosophy, is traditionally ascribed to the legendary figure of Bṛhaspati—the preceptor of the gods. The legend indicates that in the olden days the naturalist rebels against blind faith and orthodoxy were held in high esteem. The fact that Bṛhaspati has gone down in history also as the founder of the Cārvāka system developed in a later period as the culmination of the materialist thought in ancient India, proves that until the fall of Buddhism, that is, for more than a thousand years, materialism was a continuous current of thought in ancient India. The fundamental principles of the Lokāyata Darśana (Indian materialism), as it developed over this long period, were recorded as follows by Kṛṣṇamiśra, who was a younger contemporary of Buddha:

“In it only perceptual evidence is authority. The elements are earth, water, fire and air. Wealth and enjoyment are the objects of human existence. Matter can think. There is no other world. Death is the end of all.”

The Rāmāyaṇa records the story of Jāvāli—the sceptic and sophist who questioned faith and scriptural laws. The Mahābhārata also denounces “doubters and atheists who deny the reality of soul.” They “wander over the whole earth”; they were rationalists, critics of the Vedas, revilers of the Brāhmaṇas. The Gītā also refers to heretics who deny the existence of God.

3. Materialist Currents in Vedāntic and Upanishadic Texts

Nihilism was the ideology of the dissolution of antique society in India. It was revolutionary in the sense that it was a mighty revolt against Vedic priestcraft; but as a school of philosophical thought, it was sterile. Nevertheless, it very greatly influenced Buddhist philosophy. The need to dispute the nihilist doctrine promoted the rise of materialistic tendency. Indian materialism rose as reaction to nihilism. The materialist schools of Indian philosophy represented currents of thought evidently stimulated by nihilism. In order to dispute the doctrine that nothing existed, it was necessary to rely upon the existence of the material world which no sensible person could possibly dispute. The connection between nihilism and the outspokenly materialistic Vaiśeṣika system still remains a matter of investigation. But its connection with the quasi-materialist Sāṃkhya system is quite evident. In their fight against the nihilists, the Sāṃkhyas were driven very close to out and out materialism. In order to prove the reality of some existence, Kapila had to fall back upon the material world. The existence of thought by itself, or that of disembodied spirits, could not be proved to the satisfaction of the sceptics who expounded their nihilist doctrines as the logical deductions from the early spiritualist cult which was being set up in order to drug the victims of social chaos, so that they might ignore the miseries of this world as bad dreams. Therefore, more tangible evidence for the reality of existence had to be produced. The rebels and revolutionaries of ancient India thus made the rise of a philosophy possible. In order to prove the existence of thought, Kapila, for example, had to refer the reality of thought to the reality of the external world. His highly materialistic theory of cognition was also developed under the powerful impact of nihilism.

Even in the major Upaniṣads, which have come to be regarded as the foundation of the Vedāntist metaphysical system, the discerning student finds unmistakable evidence of materialism. That is only natural; because the speculations of men, whose spiritual thirst is no longer satisfied with the moonshine of natural religion, inevitably tends towards a physical explanation of natural phenomena. Ancient Indian speculation could not be free from this general psychological rule. Fragmentary evidence only proves that records of the early materialistic thought were destroyed in course of time. Until those lost chapters of the spiritual history of India are recovered or re-written, Indian philosophy will hang in the air. Pending the accomplishment of that outstanding task, for the present purpose it will be sufficient to reproduce some well-known passages from the more important Upaniṣads:

“What is the origin of the world? Ether (ākāśa), for all these beings take their rise from ether only, and return into ether. Ether is their rest.” ^[2]

Again, “That which is called ether, is the revealer of all forms and names.” ^[3]

If the conception of ākāśa is devoid of all content, then, the argument of the nihilists becomes unanswerable, and everything must be reduced to nothing, as non-existent. Moreover, in the same Upaniṣad, Brahman is also mentioned as the cause of everything. If ākāśa was a metaphysical conception, identical with Brahman, it would not be necessary for its being specified as the revealer of all forms and names, in addition to Brahman. Obviously, the function of revealing forms and names does not belong to Brahman. If things are supposed to have another cause, over and above the metaphysical Final Cause, then, the former must logically be conceived as a material cause. There must have been dispute on this point. Because Śaṅkarācārya found it necessary to insist that “the word ether must here be taken to denote Brahman.” But it is equally, or perhaps more, logical to assume that the obvious meaning of the passage is more sensible and, in that case, the fact that Brahman also was mentioned as the cause of all is to be set to the credit of prevailing prejudice. The assumption of the material cause, named ether, is sufficient for explaining the origin of the world. Yet, the venerable conception of Brahman is retained as a matter of form. The entire history of scientific thought, almost down to our days, suffers from this fallacy.

In the Kaṭha Upaniṣad, the world is visualized as evolving out of a primal material condition. Kapila takes that as his point of departure for the doctrine of the Pradhāna and Avyakta (undeveloped or potential).

In the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad, Ajā (fire or primeval nature) is assumed as “the one unborn from which everything springs.” Ajā is not, however, identified with Brahman. So, it must have been conceived as a cause other than the spiritual First Cause. Here again, the physical world is traced to a material origin. The materialistic tendency in the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad is so very pronounced that even Śaṅkarācārya finds it very difficult to explain it away. It will be shown later on that, in order to combat Buddhism which was the ultimate outcome of all the materialist tendencies in ancient India, Śaṅkarācārya was compelled to take up a very thinly veiled materialistic position.

The Vedānta has come to be accepted as the most representative and authoritative school of ancient Indian philosophy. As its name implies, it claims to contain all the wisdom of the Vedas. But being based on the authority of the Scriptures, it can hardly be accorded the distinction of philosophy. As a matter of fact, Vedānta is a very highly metaphysical system of theology. As such, it goes beyond the limits of a theistic religion, and represents a very highly developed form of pantheism. Pantheism is only inverted materialism. No other logical conclusion can be drawn from any consistent system of monism. The Vedāntist metaphysical speculation completely destroys the idea of a god, and consequently liquidates religion. The materialist implication of the Vedāntist pantheism becomes evident in its masterly exposition by Śaṅkarācārya. The metaphysical monism of the Vedānta system was constructed by the Brāhmaṇa intellectuals in order to combat the materialist schools of philosophy which had logically resulted from the earlier speculation of thinkers no longer satisfied with the fantasies and fairy-tales of the primitive Vedic religion.

The spiritual revolt represented by the Indian materialists eventually culminated in the rise of Buddhism which all but liquidated the Vedic natural religion and freed India from Brāhmaṇical domination for several hundred years. Internal evidence proves that the Vedānta Sūtras were composed for combating Buddhism. Therefore, they could not be regarded as the direct outcome of the speculative thought recorded in the Upaniṣads. The composition of the earlier Upaniṣads and the Vedānta Sūtras must have been separated by several hundred years, during which period the spiritual development of India was in the direction of materialism, represented by Kaṇāda, Kapila and many others, and of rationalism, represented by the Buddhists and Jains subsequently. The triumph of Buddhism and its supremacy for so many centuries prove that the metaphysical school of thought, represented by the Vedāntists, could not check the tide of materialism and rationalism. It was only after the defeat of the Buddhist revolution that Vedāntist metaphysics and pantheism were revived as the ideology of the Brāhmaṇical reaction. The Sūtras themselves could not have been compiled earlier than the fourth century BCE, by which time Buddhism had become a powerful challenge to the Brāhmaṇical orthodoxy. Because, a considerable portion of them is devoted to a vigorous polemic against the Buddhists. On the other hand, the philosophical origin of Buddhism is clearly to be traced to the Sāṃkhya and Vaiśeṣika systems. The early Buddhist as well as Jain philosophers drew their inspiration from Kaṇāda and Kapila.

4. Kaṇāda’s Vaiśeṣika Atomism and Physical Explanation

Although there is reason to believe that those fathers of Hindu philosophy lived more or less at the same time, a comparative study of the two systems allows the inference that Vaiśeṣika was the oldest system of Hindu philosophy. Its founder lived about the same time as the founder of ancient Greek materialism, namely, approximately in the sixth century BCE. He also expounded an atomist theory for explaining the origin of the world. The following are the main points of Kaṇāda’s atomism:

All substance is composed of parts which are governed by their qualities of inherence and conjunction. That thing at which the distinction of whole and the parts stops, and which therefore marks the limit of division into minute parts, is the atom. The atoms are the cause of the world; an effect may not be assumed without cause. The atoms are eternal, belong to four classes which possess corresponding qualities. The atoms of the same class and of similar quality combine to produce the several gross elements. The combination takes place by two causes: The material cause, inherent in the atoms themselves, and the non-inherent cause is assumed to be the super-natural will.

All substances consisting of parts originate from the substances connected with them by the relation of inherence. The substance is composed of parts inherent in it. The relation of conjunction operates in the process. Inherent parts of a substance come together, thanks to the relation of conjunction, to produce the substance. Whatever consists of parts, originates from those substances with which it is connected by the relation of inherence, conjunction co-operating. The whole world is composed of parts; because it is composed of parts, it has beginning and end; an effect may not be assumed without a cause; therefore, the atoms are the cause of the world. The atoms are of a spherical shape. When the atoms are isolated and motionless, no effect is produced. After that, the unseen principle, acting as the operative cause, and conjunction co-operating, they produce the entire aggregate of things, beginning with binary atoms. The material cause of the atomic compound is the constituent atoms; the conjunction is caused by the unseen operative cause.

The materialism of the system is evident. The only weak spot in an otherwise self-contained system of purely physical explanation of the origin of the world, is the assumption of the unseen, non-inherent, cause in addition to the material cause. Obviously, the assumption is superfluous. Since the tendency to combine is inherent in atoms themselves, there is absolutely no need for an unseen (adṛṣṭa) cause to make them coalesce. The Vaiśeṣika system does not need an impulse from outside for the atoms to begin aggregating. The tendency to combine is inherent in the atoms. “Bigness is produced from plurality inherent in the causes.” That is to say, to combine is in the nature of the atoms. Kaṇāda himself did not go so far as to visualise his atoms in a perpetual motion. The postulation of a motionless state of isolated atoms required the additional postulate of the action of the “unseen principle”. The commentator Upaskāra removed the defect. According to him, extension, that is, perceptible matter, is caused by the principle of “dvitva” inherent in the primal matter; it is a natural propensity of two atoms to unite. Indeed, the commentator makes clear an idea to be found in the Sūtras themselves.

However, in assuming the superfluous non-inherent cause, Kaṇāda did not contradict himself any more crassly than did, much later, the fathers of modern science like Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Newton and others who paid homage to the prejudice about God, even when they deprived him of all functions. Today it is not possible to say whether Kaṇāda himself believed or not in the necessity of the obviously superfluous assumption of the non-inherent cause. Even if he did, that would not affect the real implication of his hypothesis, which was purely materialistic.

Kaṇāda’s system makes no room for the soul in the metaphysical or spiritualist sense of the term. According to it, intelligence is not an inherent property of the soul; it is conceived as a mere adventitious quality of the atoms, arising only when the soul is joined with an internal organ. Kaṇāda argues: The qualities which inhere in the substance, constituting the cause, originate qualities of the same kind in the substance constituting the effect. Hence, if the intelligent Brahman is assumed as the cause of the world, we should expect to find intelligence inherent in the effect also, in the world. This is not the case. Therefore Brahman cannot be the cause of the world. Consciousness is thus regarded as the product of a complicated combination of atoms. Soul is merely the disposition of organism, which is a combination of matter. At a certain stage of combination, an atomic aggregate acquires the property of receiving impressions of external objects and reacting to them. Consciousness develops at that stage. The constituents of the “soul” of the Vaiśeṣika system are inherent in the substance which constitutes the organism. And that substance is composed of atoms, which again are only of four kinds—of water, earth, air and fire.

Moreover, while disputing the immateriality or spirituality of the soul, Kaṇāda himself throws overboard the superfluous assumption of the non-inherent cause. He categorically declares that the Brahman cannot be the cause of the world. And in another place, he declares equally categorically that the atoms are the cause of the world. The early Indian metaphysicians regarded Brahman as an intelligent being or an intelligent principle. The materialists combated that conception. They could do so because they did not require the postulate of an external intelligence or force to give the first impulse for the origin of the world. Therefore, their materialist speculation was self-contained; the formal inclusion of the conception of Brahman or non-inherent cause was only a matter of prejudice or conformity with venerable traditions.

The Vaiśeṣika system was condemned by the Orthodox as “semi-destructive” or “semi-nihilistic”, because of its dynamic view of nature. It regards nature not as a being but a process of becoming. It held that the continuous change in the size of bodies involved continuous perishing of the old and continuous rise of new substance. Even the idea of the indestructibility of matter is anticipated.

As a matter of fact, Kaṇāda’s atomism was even more self-contained than that of Democritus. By visualising the atoms as possessing the inherent property of coalescing and combining, it was free from the fallacy which opened the Democritean system to Aristotle’s attack. Kaṇāda’s system was to a large extent free from the problem of action at a distance. In his time, it was the dominating current of thought. The Vaiśeṣika atomism was the common point of departure of a whole series of speculative thinkers, whose contributions to the spiritual heritage of India approximated real philosophy, and tried to free Indian society from the domination of the Vedic priestcraft. Nevertheless, the unnecessary assumption of a metaphysical cause was due to the priestly prejudices from which the main currents of materialist and rationalist thought in ancient India could not liberate themselves. The social conditions that caused in Greece the evolution of thought from natural religion to the materialist philosophy did not ripen in India. Intellectual life remained a priestly monopoly. The result was the weakness of the scientific and rationalist thought which, therefore, was eventually overwhelmed, and even its records were practically all destroyed, by the triumphant Brāhmaṇical reaction.

5. Kapila’s Sāṃkhya System: Mechanistic Naturalism and Empiricism

Although the fundamental principles of ancient Indian materialism were stated originally in the Vaiśeṣika system, the dominating position in the intellectual life of that period came to be occupied by the Sāṃkhya system of Kapila. The latter deviated largely from the strictly materialistic ground, and developed rather as a rational-naturalist system of metaphysics. Nevertheless, the physical principles of materialism were elaborated philosophically by Kapila. He is known as an atheist who maintained that the existence of God could not be proved by logical evidence. But the real merit of his philosophy is the recognition of the objective reality of the physical world. The Sāṃkhya system decidedly rejects the doctrine that the external world has no objective existence, and that nothing exists but thought. Arguing against some earlier philosophers, who are characterised by the commentators as “heretics” or “nihilists”, Kapila lays down: “Not thought alone exists; because there is the intuition of the external world.” “Then, since, if the one does not exist, the other does not exist, there is a void.” ^[4]

The most authoritative commentator, Vijñānabhikṣu, interprets the Sūtras as follows: “The reality is not thought alone; because external objects also are proved to exist, just as thought is, by intuition. If external things do not exist, then, a mere void offers itself. Because, if the external world does not exist, then, thought does not exist; for, it is intuition that proves the objective; and, if the intuition of the external did not establish the objective, then, the intuition of thought also would not establish the existence of thought.”

The analogy with the point of departure of Descartes’ rationalism—“Cogito, ergo sum”—is obvious. But there is more than pure rationalism. The theory of cognition is definitely materialistic. The underlying principle of the Sāṃkhya theory of knowledge is identical with the modern materialist principle that consciousness is determined by being. The defenders of the religious doctrine of creation tried to silence the enquiry about the origin of things by denying the reality of the world itself. They argued that a thing of dream—an unreality—did not need a substantial origin. Kapila retorted: “The world is not unreal; because there is no fact contradictory (to its reality), and because it is not the (false) result of depraved senses (leading to a belief in what ought not to be believed).” This is clear enough. But Kapila goes farther—to the extent of stating the fundamental principle of the rationalist-materialist view of the world: “A thing is not made out of nothing.” ^[5]

The bottom is knocked off the doctrine of creation. The origin of the physical world is traced to an endless process of causality, and that process is inherent in nature. Existing eternally by itself, the world does not need a creator or creation. Nor is there any beginning. Because, in that case also, something would come out of nothing. Thus, the Sāṃkhya system rejects even “immanent teleology”, a doctrine made fashionable by some philosophers of our time.

The materialist essence of the Sāṃkhya system is confused by its apparent rejection of atomism. But the very argument advanced for the purpose implies a more perfected form of materialism: “What is limited cannot be the substance of all.” Together with the Vaiśeṣika, the Sāṃkhya system also reduces the “gross elements” to atoms; but Kapila traces the severally existing atoms down to a still simpler all-pervading substance. This is very much the same as done by Aristotle; but there is no evidence whether he resorted to this expediency to avoid the baffling problem of action at a distance. However, by seeking the ultimate substance beyond the atoms, Kapila anticipated the most modern conception of substance instead of rejecting materialism.

Kapila visualised existence as a hierarchy, so to say, composed of twenty-five realities. In addition to the soul, nature, mind and self-consciousness, there are “subtle” elements, sense organs and “gross elements.” The pyramid stands on the apex. Reverse the order, and you have a process of evolution. But Kapila conceived the process in the Hegelian fashion: as “Idea expressing itself.” Although the process of evolution is set on its head, the “realities”, however, are derived inductively from the immediately perceptible gross elements. The existence of the “subtle elements” (sound, colour, touch, taste and smell) is inferred from the “gross elements” which are directly perceptible. The logic is obvious: Everything that is gross is formed of something which is less gross. The process is traced to the primal state of nature in which everything lies in a state of inaction. But Nature is not only eternal, but self-operative. “Since the root has no root, the root is rootless.” ^[6] Thus, Nature is the Final Cause. Since mind and self-consciousness are placed within the scheme of nature, they are included in the materialistic system. Only the soul stands outside, but like Newton’s deus ex machina, it is completely unnecessary for explaining the being and becoming of the world. The existence of nature is inferred from its perceptible phenomena. These are real; they must therefore have a real cause. That is to say, the constituents of the world exist eternally. Those ultimate elements are called, in the Vaiśeṣika and Nyāya systems, atoms. Kapila reduces them to an all-pervasive existence, and calls it Nature in a state of inaction.

The Nature of the Sāṃkhya in its primal state is like Spinoza’s “beseelte Materie” (animated substance). Three qualities (goodness, passion and darkness), inherent in nature, are the lever of all natural operations. Atomism is rejected, because pain and pleasure are not properties of the atom. Everything in existence is an aggregate of pain, pleasure, delusion etc. which are clearly perceptible. But here arises a very pertinent question: What is the cause of these categories or qualities? Kapila himself asserts that something cannot come out of nothing. Obviously to avoid this dilemma, he makes his Nature an all-pervading primal substance, having the three qualities in a state of equilibrium. The atomists would contend that the atom could just as well represent the equilibrium of qualities. However, Kapila’s rejection of atomism leads him to a position where the materialness of Nature appears to disappear. The primal existence appears like the Brahman of the Vedāntist, or the Hegelian Non-Being—Absolute Nothing. But that is far from what Kapila desires to establish. Therefore, he concludes his arguments against atomism by reaffirming the materialness of Nature:

“Nothing can be produced from a non-entity like man’s horn.”

“There must be some material of which the product may consist.” ^[7]

The Sāṃkhya system, with its rigid rationalism, cannot do without a material substratum of the world, because, if that is dispensed with, everything may happen everywhere, which is an absurdity according to itself. Consequently, the Sāṃkhya conception of primal nature cannot be essentially different from the conception of “matter in motion.” Its rejection of atomism, therefore, could not be a repudiation of materialism; it was done with the motive of making the physical explanation of the world free from all possible logical fallacies. An all-pervasive primal substance obviates the difficulty of original combination, and consequently, for securing the first impulse, the postulate of a metaphysical agency is not necessary.

Indeed, a mechanistic conception of nature is not only logically inherent in the Sāṃkhya system, but becomes explicit in the definition of the properties of the “Pradhāna.” Kapila holds that just as mother’s milk and water flow mechanically, just so “the Pradhāna also, although non-intelligent, may be supposed to move from its own nature.” Motion, as distinct from conscious movement or intelligence, is thus clearly visualised as inherent in the Pradhāna, which is the name for the all-pervading material substratum of the world. This again shows that the metaphysical elements in the Sāṃkhya system are altogether superfluous, the system being self-contained as a mechanistic-materialist conception of the world.

As regards the soul, it is explicitly ruled out as the Final Cause of things; and the obvious logical deduction that the origin of things is material, is clearly drawn from the superfluity of the conception of soul:

“While both (Nature and Soul) are antecedent (to all products), since the one (Soul) is devoid (of this character of being a cause), it is applicable only to the other of the two (Nature).” ^[8]

Having divested soul of all qualities, and ascribed to nature all active properties and the status of the Final Cause, Kapila finds it very difficult to prove how the non-discrimination between the two originates. The difficulty lies in the fact that his conception of Nature as a self-operative entity renders soul only an empty conception—a concession to traditional prejudice. He extricates himself from the position by going still another step farther away from metaphysical dualism towards materialistic monism. Understanding, mind, reason, and even ego, are all discriminated from the Soul as products of Nature. Thus, the Soul is left without any function. Indeed, by its very nature (absolute, immutable etc.), it cannot have any connection with anything. Thus, there is an unbridgeable gulf between the two ultimate categories of existence. The gulf could be bridged only by abandoning the dualist position. It is difficult to ascertain if Kapila himself did that. The Sūtras are not very clear on the point. One of the commentators cuts the Gordian knot:

“These two (Nature and Soul) are alike without antecedent, like seed and sprout of which it is needless to ask which is the first; the old puzzle, which was the first, the acorn or the oak? being a frivolous question.”

The relation between Soul and Nature (Prakṛti and Puruṣa) thus interpreted, the Sāṃkhya system becomes free of the dualist fallacy, and stands out as a self-contained materialist system. Either simultaneous existence of the two uncreated beings is admitted, or Soul ceases to exist except as an attribute of Nature. Then, the logic of “seed and sprout” is faulty. The removal of this logical defect leads to monism. Of the Soul and Nature, one must be the cause of the other. By its very nature, the Soul of Sāṃkhya cannot be the cause of creation; because, in that case, it would cease to be what it is and could never be emancipated. So, there remains Nature as the only real source of existence, and Kapila conceives Nature as a purely material entity, self-originating and functioning mechanically. Even the so-called vital forces are the products of the mechanistic operation of the material entity, Nature.

The most important contribution made to the development of philosophical thought by the Sāṃkhya system, however, is its sensationalist theory of knowledge. Kapila was an out and out empiricist. He holds, with an admirable logical rigour, that sense perception is the only reliable source of knowledge:

“Determination (right apprehension) of something not previously known is right notion (knowledge). What is in the highest degree productive thereof, is evidence.” ^[9]

Evidence is defined as perception, inference and testimony (scriptural). By admitting inference in the category of evidence, Kapila anticipated the rise of inductive logic. His contribution to the scientific mode of thought, therefore, is very considerable. The above Sūtra is interpreted by one of the commentators as follows: “The proof or evidence, or whatever we may choose to call that from which right notion results, is just the conjunction of an organ (with the appropriate object).”

The Sūtras themselves are very categorical about the role of perception in the process of acquiring knowledge. A decisive answer to the questions raised even by modern epistemological nihilists was given by Kapila:

“Perception is that discernment which, being in conjunction (with the things perceived), portrays the forms thereof.” ^[10]

It is held that the organs (external, that is, of perception, and internal, that is, of inference) are products of Nature. They are not “depraved”; that is, they do not portray as real what is not real. Therefore, whatever is established on their evidence is real. Since the organs bear testimony to the existence of the external world, its reality is established.

6. Bṛhaspati, the Cārvāka System, and Early Materialism

While the Sāṃkhyas thus expounded an atheistic naturalism, the Vaiśeṣika and Nyāya systems tended clearly towards materialism. That very significant evolution of thought out of the background of the Vedic religion and the metaphysical speculations of the Upaniṣads, in the fullness of time ushered in the Golden Age of India, that is, the Buddhist period.

When Buddha was a young man, the great halls and vast forests of northern India were echoing with disputations denying the divine origin of the Vedas and the authority of the Brāhmaṇas, and preaching agnosticism, atheism and materialism. And it was during the several centuries of the Buddhist era that India really attained a very high level of material and moral culture.

The long process of the development of naturalist, rationalist, sceptic, agnostic and materialist thought in ancient India found culmination in the Cārvāka system of philosophy, which can be compared with Greek Epicureanism, and as such is to be appreciated as the positive outcome of the intellectual culture of ancient India. The greatest of the Paribrājakas mentioned in the earliest Buddhist literature, those Sophists and Stoics of ancient India, was one Bṛhaspati.^[11] He was the founder of Indian Epicureanism—the Cārvāka system. The Bṛhaspati Sūtras are referred to frequently in contemporary Buddhist and Brāhmaṇical texts. But only some remnants of the Sūtras themselves survived the downfall of Buddhism. From them we learn that Bṛhaspati condemned Brāhmaṇas as “men devoid of intellect and manliness, who uphold the authority of the Vedas because they yield them the means of a comfortable livelihood.”

The Cārvākas laughed at the notion that the Vedas were divinely revealed truth; they held that truth can never be known except through the senses. Therefore, the idea of soul is a delusion. The Cārvākas thus anticipated the modern philosophical thought of ultra-empiricism. They held that even reason was not to be trusted, because every inference depended for its validity not only on accurate observation and correct reasoning, but also upon the assumption that the future would behave like the past, and of this there was no certainty. That was anticipating modern agnosticism more than two thousand years before Hume. But the Cārvākas were not mere nihilists, agnostics and sceptics. They developed an elaborate system of positive philosophical thought:

“All phenomena are natural. Neither in experience nor in history do we find any interposition of supernatural forces. Matter is the only reality; the mind is matter thinking. The hypothesis of a creator is useless for explaining or understanding the world. Men think religion necessary only because, being accustomed to it, they feel a sense of loss and an uncomfortable void when the growth of knowledge destroys faith. Morality is natural; it is a social convention and convenience, not a divine command. There is no need to control instincts and emotions; they are commands of nature. The purpose of life is to live; and the only wisdom is happiness.”

7. The Buddhist Revolution, Dialectics, and Atomism

As the composite outcome of all the positive elements in the whole previous history of Indian thought, Buddhism shook the very foundation of the hoary edifice of Brahmanical orthodoxy. It disputed the authority of the Scriptures; vigorously condemned the sacrificial rites and rituals of the Vedic Natural Religion; it denied the existence even of an impersonal First Cause (the Brahman of the Upanishads); and it discarded the doctrine of Soul. For the first time, there began to develop in India a system of truly philosophical thought, having for its point of departure the atomism of the Nyaya-Vaisheshik system and the rationalist-mechanistic conception of Nature contained in the Sankhya system.

Moreover, the Buddhist philosophers, particularly of the “realist” (Sarvastitvavadins) and the “nihilist” (Sunyavadins) schools, took over the sceptical views of the earliest ideological rebels who preceded the formulation of the materialist systems of the Vaisheshiks and Sankhyas. But the so-called “nihilism” of the Buddhists is to be traced back directly to the dialectic view of nature: that the continuous change in bodies, owing to atomic combination and separation, necessarily involves a continuous process of the old perishing and the new growing. This dynamic view of nature was formulated in the Vaisheshik system, and subsequently elaborated by Kapila, who, notwithstanding his unnecessary metaphysical deviation, was essentially a materialist.

The Buddhist “nihilists”, however, did not reduce everything to non-existence as had been done by the older nihilists. The Buddhists visualized everything in an endless process of constant flux. They challenged the notion of an eternal, changeless, absolute existence. The logical consequence of their dynamic view was the rejection of the dogma of the Absolute Truth revealed in the Vedas. All the three schools of the Buddhist philosophy (including the Idealists – Vijnanvadins) taught that every existence is momentary – in a state of eternal flux. Their doctrine controverted the basic assumption of the orthodox Hindu philosophy of the Vedanta system.

On the basis of the materialistic and quasi-materialistic Vaisheshik and Sankhya systems, Buddha reversed the relation between the spiritual and material beings. As a consequence of the reversal of the order of sequence, their relative values were also revaluated. Buddha held that soul is a byproduct of the very being of man, governed by the laws of nature. Thus differentiated from, and contrasted with, “the spiritual” being could only mean physical being. The Buddhist conception of individual consciousness does not carry with it any assertion or implication that “the Ego” exists or is, in any way, a reality. What really exists, according to Buddhism, is sanskaras—activities and impressions man receives in course of these activities. The sanskaras, again, work out in a causal series. The soul does not inspire the activities of man’s life; on the contrary, it is the sum total of impressions accumulated by organic activities.

The materialist essence of Buddhist philosophy, although couched in an ethico-idealistic terminology, stands out in a clear relief under the fierce attack of its Brahmanical opponents. Sankaracharya, for example, exclaimed in exasperation: “Thus, blind karma is permanent, having the power to produce an infinite number of conscious individuals—souls!” A correct evaluation of consciousness, which implied devaluation of the soul, the denial of its spiritual nature, and precedence over physical being, led Buddha to do away with the belief in God, who can be conceived philosophically only as the “Universal Soul”. For the solution of the question of life, Buddha found that belief in God was useless. Since the existence of God, as the spiritual cause of the Universe, can be established only upon the assumption of the extra-materiality of human consciousness, the rejection of the doctrine of soul necessarily leads to the denial of God. God cannot be reached except through the doctrine of soul.

The Realist school of Buddhism defines the existence of a thing as its causal efficiency. According to this essentially materialistic doctrine, the existence of an abstract principle cannot be proved. The Nihilist school is deduced from the Realist. It holds that, since everything is being constantly destroyed, a void – nonexistence – is the cause of everything. According to Sankaracharya, they preached the following doctrine: “Nothing can become a cause as long as it remains unchanged, but has to that end undergo destruction, and that thus existence springs from non-existence only”. The Buddhist Sutra itself is: “On account of the manifestation (of effects) not without previous destruction (of the cause).” The seed must decompose, become non-existent as seed, before the plant can grow. The world is thus visualized as a self-originating, dynamic process. There is no difference between the Realists and the Nihilists, if their common materialist essence is divested of scholastic sophistry.

Buddhist materialism was based on Vaisheshik atomism. It can be summarised as follows: There are two aggregates of existence – external (material) and internal (mental). But mind presupposes the existence of an atomic combination. The external, composed of the “elements” (bhuta) and “elementals” (bhautika), embrace the outside nature as well as the gross bodily organs. The former is made of elements which are earth, water, fire and air. These, in their turn, are formed respectively of the different kinds of atoms; whereas the latter are made of the “elementals”, that is, diverse combinations of the elements.

Since mind and things mental are conditional upon the existence of an atomic aggregate, the “internal” is evidently not an independent being; it grows out of the “external”. In other words, the mental is derived from the material. This is further evidenced from the division of the “internal” into five groups (skandhas). They are sensation, knowledge, feeling, verbal knowledge and impression. These are all diverse functions of the bodily organism – an aggregate of atoms. No school of Buddhist philosophy admits the existence of any extra-natural or metaphysical intelligence, such as God or Soul, which might bring about the first aggregation of atoms. Therefore, atomic combination must be visualized as a mechanical process out of which the so-called “internal”, that is, the intelligent part of existence, arises.

But the Buddhist philosophy stopped short of this logical conclusion from its own premises. The reason of that shortcoming was the idea of “Nirvana”, which was the characteristic feature of a psychological condition created in an atmosphere of social dissolution. The world is full of sorrows and miseries. One must run away from it. The cardinal principle of Buddhism, namely, “Nirvana”, contradicted the entire system of Buddhist philosophy. Sankaracharya pointed out that contradiction: “Nor can the atoms and skandhas be assumed to enter on activity on their own account, for that would imply their never ceasing to be active.” The ideal of “Nirvana” is the cessation of all activity. According to the Buddhist mechanistic view of nature, atoms and their aggregates are auto-active. Therefore, as Sankaracharya pointed out, their activity can never cease. The material world is eternal.

The ideal of “Nirvana” represented the nihilism of Buddhist philosophy. It was the quintessence of the ideology of social dissolution. The positive materialist character of Buddhism made it victorious, for a time. But eventually, it was bound to be overwhelmed by its own contradictions. Buddhism was the product of the social conditions of the epoch. It was the ideology of those who could not deny the effects (pains etc.) of the material existence. For the multitude, the conditions of social dissolution only meant pains. So, that was the effect of their material existence. On the other hand, the initial triumph of Buddhism was due to the fact that it secured the adhesion of a rising class which rejected the Brahmanic dogma of other-worldliness. According to Sankaracharya, Buddha himself was an idealist. Nevertheless, he propounded a realistic philosophy, “conforming himself to the mental state of some of his disciples.” It is recorded that hundreds of merchants were associated with Gautama.

The idealistic deviation of the Buddhist philosophy was caused by its having enlisted the patronage of the upper classes. In order to refute the Brahmanical dogma of the Eternal Truth, the rebels expounded the doctrine of the momentariness of everything. In course of time, the doctrine of temporariness was applied not only to the physical, but also to the mental phenomena. The adverse effects of the social existence, pain, sorrow, etc., were also declared to be momentary. One step farther, and Buddhist philosophy shifted its moorings from materialism to idealism. What is momentary is not real; therefore, pain etc are but ideas which have no objective causes. They are only mental states. There does not exist anything but ideas. But the other cardinal principle of the Buddhist philosophy could not be altogether discarded. The phenomenal world is without a beginning; but ideas also have always existed in a chain of mutual causality. They do not need any external object. They are self-existing.

The idealist deviation rendered Buddhism susceptible to Brahmanical influence. The Mahayana School became a replica of Hindu ritualism. Nevertheless, Buddhist idealism retained its philosophical character as against the theological nature of the Brahmanical metaphysics. It never denied the existence of the world; it vaguely came near to the modern philosophical conception of the identity of the object and subject.

The preoccupation with the idea of “Nirvana” involved Buddhist philosophy into a maze of metaphysical speculations. In that realm of pure fantasies, the Brahmin scholastics not only held their own, but before long turned the table. Sankaracharya had no difficulty in proving that the entire system of the materialist-rationalist Buddhist philosophy was incompatible with the doctrine of “Nirvana”. The priestly monopoly of ideology was reasserted after it had been shaken by the Buddhist Revolution.

8. Jain Dialectics and the Critique of Absolute Being

The dynamic view of nature attained a high degree of clarity with the Jains. The dialectic logic developed by the Jain philosophers was later on condemned by Sankaracharya as “an unsettling style of reasoning”. It was, indeed, unsettling for the rigid orthodox logic which set up an imaginary absolute standard. Once the absoluteness of the standard of truth is disputed, the whole airy structure of doctrines and dogmas, reared upon that foundation, necessarily collapses.

The Jain philosophers maintained that contradictory attributes, such as being and non-being, could belong to one and the same thing. They subjected the conceptions of absoluteness, unity and eternity to their “unsettling style of reasoning”. The result was rejection of the doctrine of the Brahman. The disruptive effect of their views and methods of reasoning can be judged from the charge Sankaracharya brought against them: “If you maintain that the heavenly world and final release exist or do not exist, and are eternal or non-eternal, the absence of all determinate knowledge, which is implied in such statements, will result in nobody’s acting for the purpose of gaining the heavenly world and final release.”

The Jains also believed in Soul; but they conceived it as a constantly changing entity-something very different from the orthodox “simple and immortal” divine spark in man. They thought that soul was composed of an infinite number of particles – “soul-atoms” – which was constantly increasing and decreasing. That, in their opinion, did not affect the permanence of the soul; for a thing can be permanent and non-permanent at the same time. For example, although the water is constantly flowing, the stream of water is always there. The ontological counterpart of this logic is obvious: The phenomenal world is permanent and real with all its continual changes and transitoriness.

9. Pessimism, Self-Mortification, and Social Stagnation

In the antique period, as well as in the middle-ages, Indian society never quite reached a level of evolution where the power and position of the priesthood could be successfully disputed by a new social class which, by its very nature, would be the standard-bearer of scientific thought and thus lay down the foundation of philosophy.

The distinctive feature of Indian speculation, common to all schools, including even those materialist and quasi-materialist ones, some records of which have come down in history, is the anxiety to find release from the bondage of the life in this world. This morbid conception of life originated in the chaotic and depressing conditions resulting from the disintegration of the antique social order. The picture of social conditions towards the close of the Epic Era, as depicted in the Mahabharata, is anything but bright. Such conditions were sure to beget pessimism as well as revolt. Legends, recorded in the Mahabharata, testify to the rise of the forces of revolt which sometimes were too powerful for the weakened Kshattriya ruling class. But that was an elemental movement, rather actuated by despair than inspired by the ideal of a new social order.

Pessimism was the prevailing spirit. All the schools of Indian speculation bear the stamp. All look upon nature as a source of bondage; the freedom was not to be had by bursting the bondage, that is, by conquering nature, but by the easier, imaginary way of running away from the “evil”. The idea of conquering the external nature never entered Indian speculation. Therefore, it could not ever attain the level of real philosophy. Self mortification is not the conquest of nature. It is to block all the ways of knowing external causes. It means plunging into the dark ocean of blissful ignorance.

Self-mortification, however, had no place in the primitive Vedic religion which, like all natural religions, was “materialistic” in the vulgar sense of the term. Pessimism, begotten in the chaotic and miserable conditions of the disintegration of the tribal society, was seized upon by the priestly ruling class as the opportunity for expounding the pernicious doctrine of renunciation and self-mortification which became such an effective weapon in the struggle for maintaining their dominating position. Life is full of miseries, because the desires of man can never be satisfied. Control the desires, you will be free from the evils of nature, and all misery will cease. Eternal bliss will be yours. The triumph of this “spiritualist” view of life reflected a tremendous social reaction which, in its turn, deeply affected speculative thought for a long time to come. Even revolutionary Buddhism could not fully live down that corrupting tradition of a previous social reaction, and was eventually vitiated by the poison. The triumph of the doctrine of self-mortification as the way out of the miseries of life represented the defeat of the forces of dissatisfaction with, and revolt against, the established order of things.

The discontent with things as they are is the condition for their change. The replacement of discontent by resignation, of revolt by indifference, means stagnation of social energy. All striving for material progress ceases, and ideological evolution is correspondingly affected. The triumph of the reactionary priesthood in the class struggle of remote antiquity determined the peculiar feature of Indian speculative thought. The triumph of reaction, in its turn, was possible because there had not yet arisen a class which could lead Indian society out of the crisis resulting from the downfall of the tribal social order. In course of time, the relation of classes changed. More or less disruptive schools of speculation flourished. But they all bore, in a greater or lesser degree, the distinctive stamp which signified a very slow process of social evolution, and the consequent continuation of sacerdotal supremacy.

The urges of life compel man to take up the endless struggle with nature. In course of this struggle, man penetrates deeper and deeper into the mysteries of the Universe, and progressively these mysteries cease to be mysterious. Primitive empiricism gives birth to philosophy; philosophy is the mother of science, and finally science enthrones the venerable mother as the “science of sciences”. The taboo on the joy of life, the perverse prejudice against the natural urges of life, emasculates man. It holds him back from the mission, given to him by his very being. Consequently, it precludes a free spiritual evolution. Man creates science and philosophy; when the conditions of his social existence set limits to his human existence, his thoughts are naturally distorted. Indian speculation presents such a picture of distorted thought.

Therefore, the rationalist, materialist and naturalist teachings of Kanad, Kapila, Brihaspati, Gautama, Mahabir, and others were ultimately buried under the ruins of the Buddhist revolution. Brahmanical reaction, reasserting itself in the scholasticism of Sankaracharya, choked all spiritual progress so successfully that a renaissance of the ancient liberating thought was delayed until it was too late. The Hindu ruling classes were so exhausted by the delirium of having overwhelmed a mighty revolution that the country became an easy prey to foreign invaders. General prostration and stagnation, on the other hand, precluded the rise of new social forces corresponding to those which rescued Europe from the darkness of the pious and spiritual middle-ages.

10. Śaṅkarācārya’s Polemics and the Triumph of Reaction

Whatever record exists about the various schools of philosophical thought in ancient India, bears testimony to the fact that dissatisfaction with the Vedic Natural Religion gave rise to speculations about the origin of the world, which inevitably developed tendencies to explain the world in physical terms. In India also, physics preceded metaphysics. Much of the really philosophical thought of ancient India has unfortunately been lost. But from the fragmentary evidence recorded, that forgotten chapter of the spiritual history of India can be reconstructed. As everywhere, originally, in India also philosophy was materialism. The materialistic outcome of the speculations of the rebels against the Vedic Natural Religion, contained in the three systems of philosophy proper, namely, Vaisheshik, Sankhya and Nyaya, provided the inspiration for the greatest event in the history of ancient India—the Buddhist Revolution. The spiritual development of India during nearly a thousand years, beginning from the seventh century B.C., was very largely dominated by materialist and rationalist tendencies. It is highly doubtful whether the Vedanta system was formulated before the end of that Golden Age of Indian history. Internal evidence clearly proves the opposite case. The main purpose with which Vedantist pantheism was developed was to combat the materialist systems of Kanad and Kapila as well as the revolutionary doctrines of Buddhism and the unsettling logic of the Jains. That being the case, it is permissible to maintain that in ancient India, until the fall of Buddhism, philosophy was largely materialistic. Even as late as the fourth century A.D., in the period of triumphant Hindu restoration under the Gupta dynasty, the Chinese traveller Fa Hien found in India no less than “ninety-six heretical sects, all of whom admitted the reality of worldly phenomena.”

Sankaracharya constructed his rigidly logical, but philosophically ambiguous system of monism for combating Buddhist idealism. But the real enemy he had to contend with was the materialist traditions of the pre-Buddhist philosophy. His works are full of long polemics against materialist and naturalist doctrines, so much so that the fragments, profusely quoted by him, can serve as a reliable foundation for reconstructing the latter.

The following can be reconstructed as the summary of the “atheism and materialism” that Sankaracharya combated, from fragmentary evidences contained in his own works:

Religious doctrines are all meaningless words. Their foundation is the idea of God whose very existence cannot be proved. The God is the Creator, but he has no origin. If it is admitted that there must be a Creator and ruler of the world, then, there arises the question: Who created the Creator? Whence did he come? The Creator is said to be without beginning and without end; without any limit. But after all, he is a Creator, which implies a personality on his part. The God is, indeed, considered to be the Creator. But a person cannot be without beginning and end and other limits. If the God is limited, then, is it not possible that there may exist a power over and above him? The God is believed to be all-powerful and, all-pervading. But these attributes of the God cease to be what they are believed to be, as soon as they are imagined by man. Thus, the essence of the God, the Creator, disappears. Then, it is taught that desire is the cause of creation. From this, it follows that God himself is not free from desire. Further, if the Universe is created by the Will of God, then, God himself must have the feeling of want; for, wish grows out of want. The feeling of want destroys omnipotence, omniscience and all other superhuman attributes ascribed to the God.

What has come down to us as the most authoritative and representative Hindu philosophy, was the creation of Sankaracharya. He was the ideologist of the Brahmanical reaction and patriarchal sacerdotal society which were re-established on the ruins of the Buddhist revolution. But all Sankaracharya’s efforts for liquidating the traditions of the really philosophical thoughts of ancient India were a failure. This very important fact of the spiritual history of India is not realised. Yet, it is obvious from a critical study of Sankaracharya’s work. He failed to meet the materialists on their ground. He could not refute their arguments. He had to fall back on the authority of the Scriptures, the repudiation of which had been the starting point of all philosophical thought in ancient India. Of all the great ancient rationalists, Kapila alone had admitted scriptural testimony as evidence. But that was only a formal concession. While declaring that the existence of God could not be proved, because there was no evidence, Kapila does not take scriptural testimony into account. Even the Vedanta Sutras themselves do not accept the Scriptures as answering all the questions raised by those dissatisfied with the dogmas of natural religion. “Not having found the highest bliss in the Vedas, Sandilya studied the Sastras.” ^[12] The latter contain primitive rationalism which rejects the childish faith of the Vedic religion.

So highly developed and powerful were the materialist and naturalist schools combated by Sankaracharya, that, whenever he tried to refute their arguments logically, he was driven to take up an essentially materialistic position. His pantheistic monism is inverted materialism. The Mayavad is a shame-faced recognition of the reality of the external world. It is only by degenerating into a dogmatic system of theology, which tries to reconcile even the gods of the Vedic natural religion with the metaphysical conception of Brahman that Sankaracharya’s system apparently escapes the glorious fate common to all systems of consistent pantheism. The fate is to corroborate the materialist view from the opposite direction.

Sankaracharya begins his commentary of the Vedanta Sutras with the assumption, that it is a matter not requiring any proof that the object and the subject are opposed to each other as much as darkness and the light are, and therefore cannot be identical. Starting from this absolute dualistic conception, his monotheism could be established only by the absurd sophistry of the doctrine of Maya. In order to establish the “reality” of an existence, which is simply assumed, and which, by its very nature, as well as admittedly, cannot be proved, the perceptible and provable existence is declared to be an illusion. The Brahman is associated with a certain power called Avidya which is the cause of all the appearances of the world. This power cannot be called “Being”, for Being is only Brahman. But immediately it is also admitted that it cannot be called “non-being”; for, at any rate, it produces the appearance of this world. It is in fact a principle of illusion: the undeniable cause owing to which there seems to exist a material world. Maya thus constitutes the Upadhana, the material cause of the world. It belongs to the Brahman, as a Sakti. The material cause of the world is Brahman in so far as it is associated with Maya.

This doctrine obviously contradicts the conception of Brahman as a unitary and absolute existence. Brahman is destitute of all qualities; it is devoid of all attributes-thought, activity etc. Yet, Maya is assumed to be its Sakti. Moreover, Maya is conceived as an existence parallel to Brahman. The idea of “association” presupposes two entities; similarly, that of belonging. Since it is admitted that Brahman may be regarded as the material cause of the world, it cannot be an immaterial entity. Two qualitatively different things can never stand in relation of causality. On the other hand, if the position of Brahman is not compromised by placing it in a relation of causality with the material world, then, the latter must be granted an independent existence. Whatever may be its cause, the Brahman cannot be its origin. Sankaracharya gets out of this difficulty by falling back on religion. He argues: “If it be objected that on the Vedanta doctrine there is no room for a moving power, as in consequence of the oneness of Brahman no motion can take place, we reply such objections by pointing to the fact of the Lord being fictitiously connected with Maya.” This sort of argument carries little conviction to those who do not start from the fundamental dogma of religion. To begin with, the material world is dismissed as an illusion. The “real” existence has nothing to do with it. Then, the question about the moving forces of the phenomenal world is answered by asserting dogmatically that the metaphysical entity Brahman becomes a personal God and maintains a fictitious connection for causing the phenomenal world. All these curious devices and grossly fallacious arguments were adopted to combat materialistic monism.

The unreality of the phenomenal world is the fundamental dogma of the Vedanta system. But in order to refute the idealistic school of Buddhism, Sankaracharya himself rejected the very dogma. The Buddhist idealists held that cognition was exclusively an internal process; not that it had no connection with the external object, but that it was self-contained; the external objects existed only in their relation to the mind. The substantial residue of objects is atoms, the rest being form; but the atom cannot be conceived by mind.

In combatting this doctrine, Sankaracharya writes: “The non-existence of external things cannot be maintained, because we are conscious of external things. Why should we pay attention to a man who affirms that no such thing exists?” Why should we, then, take Sankaracharya seriously when he talks of Maya? He proceeds: “That the outward thing exists apart from consciousness, has necessarily to be accepted on the ground of the nature of consciousness. Nobody, when perceiving a post or a wall, is conscious of his perception only; but all men are conscious of posts and walls as objects of their perceptions. Even those who contest the existence of external things, bear witness to their existence when they say that, what is an internal object of cognition appears like something external. No one says that Vishnumitra appears like the son of a barren mother. If we accept the truth as it is given to our consciousness, we must admit that the objects of perception appear to us as something external. Because, the distinction of thing and idea is given in consciousness; the invariable concomitance of idea and thing has to be considered as proving only that the thing constitutes the means of ideas, not that the two are identical. It cannot be asserted in any way that the idea, apart from the thing, is the object of our consciousness; for, it is absurd to speak of a thing as the object of its own activity. The variety of mental impressions is caused altogether by the variety of external things perceived. This apparent world whose existence is guaranteed by all the means of knowledge cannot be denied.”

Here, Sankaracharya is combating his whole philosophy. Once the issues are joined on the philosophical ground, the triumph inevitably goes to materialism. When Sankaracharya himself had to expound the above purely materialistic theory of cognition, it is evident how powerful was the current of materialist thought which influenced the spiritual life of ancient India for nearly a thousand years, until the downfall of Buddhism.

The rise and fall of materialism in ancient India approximately coincided with the same events in Greece. The period of spiritual darkness following thereupon was brought to a close in Europe by the reassertion of materialist and rationalist thoughts on the strength of the achievements of modern science. That did not happen in India. Consequently, the spiritual heritage of India still remains to be rescued from her cultural ruins. What prevented India from following the same course of spiritual development as Europe, after having done that, up to only several hundred years ago, from the remotest days of human history?

In ancient Greece, philosophy was created by the class of merchant princes, whose social position was antagonistic to the power and privilege of the priesthood. In ancient India, the trading class never attained such a position in society. Self-sufficient village economy prevented the growth of trade on a national scale. The small surplus product of the village artisan was exchanged in local markets. Practically, the entire surplus agricultural produce went for the payment of taxes. It is recorded that during the centuries immediately preceding the Christian era, commodities such as precious stones, spices and silk, were exported from southern India to Greece and Rome. But the maritime trade was carried on by the Javans (Greeks), who are reported to have crowded the markets of southern Indian ports, and even been employed as soldiers by the Dravidian kings. Later on, the carrying-trade on the same route passed on to the hand of the Arabs. Foreign trade over-land, developed after the foundation of the Bactrian Kingdom, also was mostly carried on by the Javans. Some trade in large volume, however, appears to have grown in the south, which fact explains the establishment and persistence of Hinayan Buddhism (the original philosophical form) in those parts. In the Brahmanical society of the north, development of trade was discouraged. In the earlier Brahmanical laws – of Manu and Kautilya – the trader does not figure as one of the main social classes. In this connection, it will be instructive to cite what Havell discovers as the cause of the spiritual superiority of Indo-Aryan culture:

“They (Vedas) represent the culture of a race of warrior-poets and philosophers who despised the arts of commerce and lived mostly by agriculture, with one hand on the sword and the other on the plough. They built no temples, but worshipped nature-spirits with simple sacrificial rites … … The Aegean, Babylonian and Dravidian cultures were essentially mercantile civilizations with a more limited spiritual outlook, though in the nature of things, they were more concerned with the happiness which lies in material possessions than in spiritual thoughts.” ^[13]

When the more civilised Dravidians were subjugated by the pastoral Aryans, the latter imposed upon the former, social laws which checked the growth of the trading class, and consequently of free thought. As regards “the happiness of material possessions”, the beef-eating and soma-drinking Vedic priests were not averse to it. But in order to maintain themselves in the position of power and privilege, they could not let the masses participate in that happiness. Hence the “spiritual superiority” of the Indo-Aryan culture. The concern for the happiness of material possessions, not in the vulgar sense as was the case with the Vedic Rishis, but in the wide sense of conquering the forces of nature for the benefit of humanity, is the impulse to philosophic thought. Since the “spiritually superior” Indo-Aryan culture of the Vedic era did not feel this concern, philosophy remained unknown until the rise of the more progressive class of traders could not be altogether checked by priestly domination.

Buddhism is usually interpreted as the revolt of the Kshattriyas against Brahmanism. To some extent, it was so; but the mercantile class also entered into the social background of the revolution. For example, according to Hiuen Tsang, the famous University at the great Nalanda Monastery was founded by the munificence “of five-hundred merchants who were disciples of Buddha.” The merchants must have attained some social importance under the Buddhist kings. Upon the restoration of Brahmanism, under the Guptas, they were again subjected to economic limitations and social discriminations.

The codes of Manu, compiled in the fourth century A.D., placed the merchants under all sorts of disadvantages. It was from that time, that sea voyage came to be counted as one of the causes of “impurity”. The missionary work of Asoka had promoted the habit of travelling over sea. Indian traders had been visiting the Malayan Islands and China. The result must have been a widening of vision which found its reflection in the Hinayan (philosophic) school of Buddhism which for a long time resisted Brahmanic reaction in southern India. Sea voyage was prohibited by Manu because it encouraged heretical views. In the absence of a mercantile class, as an independent and powerful social force, Indian speculative thought could not become philosophy, in the correct sense. And the absence itself was the product of the given social relations. Land was held by the Kshattriyas and the Brahmins – classes which, by their very social being, were hostile to trade. In order to be so powerful as to dispute the ideological monopoly of the priesthood, the freethinking merchants must grow out of the rich landed aristocracy. But in India, the latter was closely associated with the Brahmins. That relation was established in consequence of the ruinous civil war recorded in the Mahabharata. The Kshattriyas were so seriously weakened that they had to re-admit the supremacy of the Brahmins. This peculiar complex of social relations determined the specific form of Indian thought, and explains why materialism practically disappeared, after it had flourished so well in an earlier period.