Uddālaka Āruṇi
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Uddalaka and Yajnavalkya: Materialism & Idealism
Walter Ruben argues that Indian philosophy began with Uddālaka Āruṇi, a hylozoist and primitive materialist in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad. Comparing Uddālaka’s empirical naturalism on death, sleep, mind, and monism with Yājñavalkya’s religious idealism, Ruben places Indian hylozoism alongside Thales in Greece, establishing a universal historical trajectory for the origin of philosophy.
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Marx and the Materialist Tradition in Indian Philosophy
Ramkrishna Bhattacharya applies Karl Marx’s classical philological method—used in analyzing Greek fragments—to reconstruct Indian materialism. Rejecting uniform historical linearity and uncritical acceptance of anti-materialist representations, Bhattacharya highlights internal epistemological developments, showing how Cārvāka thinkers accepted perception-based inference while rejecting scriptural dogma and later revisionist interpretations.