Ramkrishna Bhattacharya Progressive circles in India have been late in remembering D. D. Kosambi in 2007, the centennial year. Of course Pune, where Kosambi lived and died, led the way to centenary celebrations. A committee was formed with R. P. Nene and Meera Kosambi, daughter of D. D. Kosambi, to pay homage to the savant…
Ramkrishna Bhattacharya D. D. Kosambi (1907-66) was trained as a mathematician and used to teach and research in mathematics till 1941. Then he wrote an ‘exasperating essay’ on the Sanskrit epigrams attributed to Bhartrihari. This essay, Kosambi says, ‘caused every godfearing Sanskritist to shudder’ and consequently ‘I fell into Indology, as it were, through the…
Ramkrishna Bhattacharya The Cārvāka/Lokāyata school of philosophy flourished in India in or around the eighth century CE and was a living system till the twelfth or thirteenth century. Thereafter it seems to have vanished into the blue, without leaving any trace whatsoever. It was the most uncompromising philosophical system that ever appeared in India. It refused to accept the notions…
Ramkrishna Bhattacharya Very much like the Pre-Socratic philosophical works, the basic texts of the Cārvāka system are lost. Only a few fragments — passages of varying length — have come down to us. Even then all of them are not genuine, as they seem to offer contrary points of view. Earlier scholars from H. T.…
Ramkrishna Bhattacharya (a) Did the Carvakas Refuse to Admit Inference? In the Indian philosophical context, besides the issues of rebirth, afterlife and otherworld, the instruments of cognition (prammana) are considered to be of seminal importance. The Carvakas are generally branded as a philosophical school that accepted perception as the only means of knowledge. But there…
Ramkrishna Bhattacharya What is Materialism? Before proceeding to details, it is necessary to understand what, in the philosophical context, materialism stands for. George Stack has recently defined materialism as follows: Materialism is a set of theories which holds that all entities and processes are composed of—or are reducible to—matter, material forces or physical processes. All…
Ramkrishna Bhattacharya The Concise Oxford Dictionary (on CD-Rom, 11th ed. 2004) defines rationalism as “the practice or principle of basing opinions and actions on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or emotional response.” This is not the only meaning of the word. In philosophy the same term suggests “the theory that reason rather…
<!– /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} span.st {mso-style-name:st;} span.transformat {mso-style-name:transformat;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –> Ramkrishna Bhattacharya The notes propose to throw light on certain aspects of materialism in ancient India and point…
Ramkrishna Bhattacharya The title of the paper may sound odd to some, for Marx, in spite of his encyclopedic learning, was not at all conversant with the Indian philosophical tradition. Yet there are a few points in Marx’s works that may be of use in relation to the reconstruction of the materialist tradition in Indian…
<!– /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:Arial; mso-fareast-font-family:Arial; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; color:black; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} Ramkrishna Bhattacharya There are two ways of reading philosophy: Philosophical-doctrinal and Historical-textcritical. The first approach does not pay much attention…