Rhys Davids (From the introduction to the English translation of the Kutadanta Sutta; Dialogues of the Buddha – page 166-172, London, 1889) T. W. Rhys Davids There is a curious expression in the stock phrase describing the learned Brahman, so often found in the Piṭakas, which I have left untranslated in this Sutta, being uncertain…
Haraprasad Shastri (This essay was published in Dacca University Bulletin, No.1, 1925) Haraprasad Shastri The Sarvadarsanasamgraha was published in the Bibliotheca Indica Series in 1858 under the editorship of Pandit Isvar Chandra Vidyasagara. The first chapter of this work contained an account of the Carvaka Darsana – a system of philosophy which believed neither in…
Ramkrishna Bhattacharya Authors of Dharmaśāstra-s (religious law-books of India) like Manu and Yājñavalkya lose no opportunities of condemning freethinkers. They are called dambhin, nāstika, pāsandin, haituka, etc.1 The word, haituka, is of particular interest. Literally it means ‘a reasoner’ (from hetu, ‘reason’). But Medhātithi (ninth century CE), a commentator on the Manusamhitā (Manusmrti) glosses…
Ramkrishna Bhattacharya Ancient Indian physicians were as much interested in philosophical speculations as in the problem of diseases and their cure (Chattopadhyaya 1979: 110-13; Dasgupta 1975: VI and ch. 13). Two Sanskrit compendia of medicine and surgery, the Carakasamhitā (CS) and the Suśrutasamhitā (SS), often employ the Sāmkhya and Nyāya-Vaiśesika terminology (Dasgupta 1975: ibid.; Mrinal…
August Thalheimer [This essay is Chapter 6 of August Thalheimer’s ‘Introduction to Dialectical Materialism -The Marxist World-View’] August Thalheimer The Greeks played the leading role in the foundation of science and philosophy, and in the detachment of these from religion, but they are not alone in having made this progress. It is no more than just…
Ramkrishna Bhattacharya 0. Many, if not most, people nowadays go straight to the internet rather than look up a book to know something about anything under the sun. There are hundreds, if not thousands of files on the Cārvāka/Lokāyata system of philosophy there. Regrettably, many of them, though well-intentioned, are ill-informed and highly misleading. I…