Ramkrishna Bhattacharya If one sets upon oneself the task of translating the Sad-dharma-puṇḍarīka-sūtra (SDPS), a first-century CE Sanskrit Mahāyānī Buddhist text, into a modern Indian language, one will face no problem with the word lokāyata. It is current in all and can be retained in translation without bothering to explain what lokāyata means.[1] But translating…
Ramkrishna Bhattacharya Both D. D. Kosambi (1907-66) and Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya (1918-93), two leading Marxist thinkers in India, discussed at length the teachings of the six heretics and of the Buddha during the sixth/fifth century BCE in their seminal works, An Introduction to the Study of Indian History (1956) and Lokāyata (1959) respectively. It will be…
Ramkrishna Bhattacharya Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya’s Lokāyata (1959) is a much misunderstood work, although the subtitle of the book makes it clear that it is not meant to be a study in the Cārvāka/Lokāyata alone but ancient Indian materialism as a whole. Hence the book covers a wide range of issues involving archaeology, anthropology, Tantrism, Buddhism, Sāṃkhya,…
Ramkrishna Bhattacharya A Rabindranath Tagore’s later travelogues seem to be a cross between a diary and a philosophical notebook. While visiting various places in a foreign land, he keenly observes what is shown to him, records his itinerary and at the same time writes down his impressions and reflections based on his newly earned experience.…
Ramkrishna Bhattacharya Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya’s Science and Society in Ancient India (1977) impressed Joseph Needham very much as had his Lokayata (1959). But there was one point on which Needham had some reservations. A series of letters relating to the doctrine of svabhava (lit. own being) and further discussions in person (when Chattoapdhyaya visited Needham in Cambridge)…
Ramkrishna Bhattacharya Reverting to the other commentators on the Cārvākasūtra, it may be said that Aviddhakarna, like Udbhata, attempted to interpret the Cārvāka aphorisms from the Nyāya-Vaiśesika point of view, perhaps without being converted to the Cārvāka. Since it is not possible at the present state of our knowledge to determine whether they were Cārvākas…
Ramkrishna Bhattacharya A recent essay by Karin Preisendanz (2008) set me thinking about the commentary tradition of the Cārvākasūtra. In spite of the fact that the mūla-text is lost, we have a number of fragments of the commentaries written by no fewer than four commentators, namely, Kambalāşvatara, Purandara, Aviddhakarņa, and Udbhata (Bhattacharya 2009, 65–68). The…
Ramkrishna Bhattacharya What are the ontological and epistemological positions of the Cārvāka/Lokāyata? They may be stated as follows: The whole of the material world, including the human body, is made of four basic elements, namely, earth, air, fire and water; there can be no consciousness without the living body; the spirit has no extracorporeal existence…
Ramkrishna Bhattacharya Abstract: This essay proposes to review the problems of reconstructing and interpreting ancient texts, particularly philosophical commentaries, in the context of the Cārvāka/Lokāyata system of India. Following an overview of the Indian philosophical text tradition and the ontological and epistemological positions of the Cārvākas, three cases are discussed: (1) when there is no invariance…
Ramkrishna Bhattacharya The publication of Lokayata: A study in Ancient Indian Materialism (People’s Publishing House, New Delhi, 1959) by Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya (1918-1993) ushered in a new era in the cultivation of Indian philosophy. Although some academics in India were taken aback by the range of topics covered in this 678-page work (excluding bibliography and index),…