The Lokayata School

S.K.Belvalkar

R.D.Ranade

The Lokayata is a school with a
very venerable ancestry, Brihaspati the preceptor of the gods being regarded as
its first Founder. The doctrine is sometimes styled the Bhutavada, as well as
the Lokayata, and from the numerous references to it in orthodox as well as non-orthodox
works, it would seem that the doctrine was more than mere tendency: that it
had, in other words, early developed into an orderly system of thinking. It,
for instance, accepted direct perception (Pratyaksha)
as the only valid source of knowledge, denied Causality, and preached
prudential Hedonism. And its constructive programme probably included an
earnest effort, by cultivating the social and physical sciences such as they
were known at the time, to ameliorate human suffering and augment the sum-total
of human happiness. The School has had the misfortune of being known to us
only through the versions of its opponents; but its great seductive charm and
extensive vogue cannot be readily explained on the usual assumptions regarding
the purely negative and destructive character of its tenets. The Kautilya, as
is well known, assigns it quite a prominent place as a system of philosophy,
and it is likely that the teacher mentioned in the Mahabharata as the friend
and contemporary of Duryodhana, viz. Charvaka, must have exercised considerable
influence in giving unto what was merely the natural tendency of the human
mind-presenting itself at specific periods of its social evolution – a
metaphysical basis and back-ground. The teaching of Ajita Kesa-kambalin, as we
saw, agreed with the Lokayata in quite a number of details; and the
Bhagavadgita, it may be recalled, selected this very school for a particularly
virulent frontal attack (Chap. xvi). We can understand of course how it did
happen that at a time when no two prophets or philosophers seemed quite to
agree even on the most elementary of questions; and when there was no authority
living or dead that dared to prove that a thing was so-and-so, or was not so-and-so,
a voice which – acting on the famous dictum that where ignorance was bliss it
was folly to be wise – advised men to turn away from the giddy heights of
speculation and descend to the plain normal life of sense and sensibility, was
most likely to secure the readiest response. Its attacks on the Srauta religion and on all established
institutions in fact were marked by a trenchancy of style, wealth of illustrations
and, a perspicacity of argumentation which rarely failed to hit where it aimed
and achieved the victory, as indeed the few preserved specimens of it abundantly
testify.