CARVAKA

 

Introduction

 The system of philosophy named after its founder, Carvaka, was set out in the Brhaspati Sutra in India probably about 600 BCE. This text has not survived and, like similar philosophies in Greece, much of what we know of it comes from polemics against it and remarks by its critics. There is a further similarity with Greece in that this is a rationalistic and skeptical philosophy, thus undermining the widespread belief in the West that Indian philosophy is primarily religious and mystical. Amartya Sen has argued, in fact, that there is a larger volume of atheistic and agnostic writings in Pali and Sanskrit than in any other classical tradition—Greek, Latin, Hebrew, or Arabic. He adds that this applies also to Buddhism, the only agnostic world religion ever to emerge.

 Carvaka’s philosophy developed at a time when religious dogma concerning our knowledge of reality, the constitution of the world, and the concept of an afterlife were being increasingly questioned, both in India and elsewhere. Specifically, the school of Carvaka contained within itself a materialism that ruled out the supernatural (lokayata), naturalism (all phenomena described in terms of the properties of the four elements), rejection of the Vedas (nastika), and a skepticism that included rejection of inferential logic, or induction.

 One of the best sources for Carvaka’s atheistic argument happens to be a book, Sarvadarshansamgraha (the collection of all philosophies), written in the Fourteenth Century by Madhavacarya, a Vaishnavite (Hindhu) scholar. Extracts from this are provided below.

 Only the Material World Exists

 

1   The efforts of Carvaka are indeed hard to eradicate, for the majority of living beings endorse the current refrain—

While life is yours live joyously;

No one can avoid Death's searching eye:

When this body of ours is burnt,

How can it ever return again?

In accordance with the dictates of policy and enjoyment, the mass of men consider wealth and satisfaction of desire the only ends of man. They deny the existence of any object belonging to a future world, and follow only the doctrine of Carvaka. Hence another name for that school is Lokayata—a name well accordant with the thing signified [that only the material world, loka, exists].

 

 

Pleasure and Pain

 

2   The only end of man is enjoyment produced by sensual pleasures. Nor may you say that such cannot be called the end of man as they are always mixed with some kind of pain, because it is our wisdom to enjoy the pure pleasure as far as we can, and to avoid the pain which inevitably accompanies it. Thus the man who desires fish takes the fish with their scales and bones, and having eaten the parts he wants, desists. Or the man who desires rice, takes the rice, straw and all, and having taken that which he wants, desists. It is not therefore for us, through a fear of pain, to reject the pleasure which our nature instinctively recognizes as congenial. Men do not refrain from sowing rice because there happen to be wild animals to devour it; nor do they refuse to set the cooking-pots on the fire, because there happen to be beggars to pester us for a share of the contents.

        If any one were so timid as to forsake a visible pleasure, he would indeed be foolish like a beast, as has been said by the poet—

That the pleasure arising to man

from contact with sensible objects,

is to be relinquished because accompanied by pain—

such is the reasoning of fools.

The kernels of the paddy, rich with finest white grains,

What man, seeking his own true interest,

would fling them away

because of a covering of husk and dust?

 

Ritual as a Livelihood

 

3   If you object that, if there be no such thing as happiness in a future world, then why should men of experience and wisdom engage in the sacrificial offering to fire and other phenomena, which can only be performed with great expenditure of money and bodily fatigue? Alas, your objection cannot be accepted as any proof to the contrary, since the sacrificial offerings are only useful as means of livelihood.

      The Veda is tainted by the three faults of untruth, self-contradiction, and tautology. The impostors who call themselves Vedic scholars are mutually destructive, as the authority of the chapter on knowledge is overthrown by those who maintain the authority of the chapter on action. Conversely those who maintain the authority of the chapter on knowledge reject that on action. Lastly, the three Vedas themselves are only the incoherent rhapsodies of rascals, and to this effect runs the popular saying—

 

          The Sacrifices, the three Vedas, the ascetic's three staves,

              and smearing oneself with ashes—

          Brhaspati says these are but means of livelihood

              for those who have no manliness nor sense.

 

Hell as Mundane

 

4   Hence it follows that there is no other hell than the mundane pain produced by purely mundane causes, such as thorns and so forth. The only supreme being is the earthly monarch whose existence is proved by all the world's eyesight. And the only liberation is the dissolution of the body. By holding the doctrine that the soul is identical with the body, such phrases as "I am thin", or "I am black," are at once intelligible as the body’s attributes of thinness or blackness. In a similar way, self-consciousness will reside in the same subject.

 

 

Intelligence Resides in the Body

 

5   In this school the four elements, earth, fire, water and air are the original principles. From these alone, when transformed into the body, intelligence is produced—just as the intoxicating power of some herbs is developed from the mixing of certain ingredients. When the body is destroyed, intelligence at once perishes also. They quote the Vedic text for this:

 

    Springing forth from these elements itself

    solid knowledge is destroyed

    when they are destroyed—

    after death no intelligence remains.

 

Therefore the soul is only the body distinguished by the attribute of intelligence, since there is no evidence for any self distinct from the body. Therefore the existence of such a separate self cannot be proved, because this school holds that perception is the only source of knowledge and does not allow inference as an alternative source.

 

 

No Logical Basis for Inference

 

6   "It could be," says an opponent of this view; "that your wish would be gained if inference, or logic, had no force of proof; but they do have this force. If they had not, then how, on perceiving smoke, should the thoughts of the intelligent immediately proceed to fire. Or why, on hearing another say, "There are fruits on the bank of the river," do those who desire fruit go off at once to the shore?"

     All this, however, is only the inflation of the world of fancy. Those who maintain the authority of inference accept the sign or middle term as the causer of knowledge, which middle term must be found in the minor and be itself invariably connected with the major. Now this invariable connection must be a relation destitute of any condition accepted or disputed. This connection does not possess its power of causing inference by virtue of its existence, as the eye or other sense organs are the cause of perception, but by virtue of its being known. What then is the means of this connection being known? We will first show that it is not perception, which is held to be of two kinds, external and internal.

     External perception is not the required means; for although it is possible that the actual contact of the senses and the object will produce the knowledge of the particular object thus brought in contact, yet as there can never be such contact in the case of the past or the future, the universal proposition which was to embrace the invariable connection of the middle and major terms in every case becomes impossible to be known.

      Nor may you maintain that this knowledge of the universal proposition has the general class as its object, because, if so, there might arise a doubt as to the existence of the invariable connection in this particular case.

      Nor is internal perception the means, since you cannot establish that the mind has any power to act independently towards an external object, since all allow that it is dependent on the external senses. As has been said by one of the logicians, "The eye and other sense organs have their objects as described; but mind externally is dependent on the others." Nor can inference be the means of the knowledge of the universal proposition, since in the case of this inference we should also require another inference to establish it, and so on, and hence would arise the fallacy of an infinite regression.

 

 

Testimony as no Basis for Inference

 

7   Nor can testimony be the means thereof, since we may either allege in reply, in accordance with the Vaisesika doctrine of Kanada, that this is included in the topic of inference; or else we may hold that this fresh proof of testimony is unable to leap over the old barrier that stopped the progress of inference, since it depends itself on the recognition of a sign in the form of the language used in a child's presence by an old man. Moreover, there is no more reason for our believing on another's word that smoke and fire are invariably connected than for our receiving the unsupported assertion of the existence of Manu [a mythical being with no body] and the like.

        And again, if testimony were to be accepted as the only means of the knowledge of the universal proposition, then in the case of a man to whom the fact of the invariable connection between the middle and major terms had not been pointed out by another person, there could be no inference of one thing, such as fire, on seeing another, such as smoke. Hence, on your own showing, the whole topic of inference for oneself would have to end in mere idle words.

 

 

Comparison no Basis for Inference

 

8   Then again, comparison and the like must be utterly rejected as the means of the knowledge of the universal proposition, since it is impossible that they can produce the knowledge of this invariable connection, because their end is to produce the knowledge of quite another connection, namely, the relation of a name to something so named.

        Again, this same absence of a condition, which has been given as the definition of an invariable connection or universal proposition, can itself never be known; since it is impossible to establish that all conditions must be objects of perception. Therefore, although the absence of perceptible things may be itself perceptible, the absence of non-perceptible things must be itself non-perceptible; and thus, since we must here too have recourse to inference, we cannot leap over the obstacle which has already been planted to bar this.

        But since the knowledge of the condition must here precede the knowledge of the condition's absence, it is only when there is the knowledge of the condition that the knowledge of the universality of the proposition is possible, i.e., a knowledge in the form of such a connection between the middle term and major term as is distinguished by the absence of any such condition; and, on the other hand, the knowledge of the condition depends upon the knowledge of the invariable connection. Thus we fasten on our opponents, as with adamantine glue, the thunderbolt-like fallacy of reasoning in a circle. Hence by the impossibility of knowing the universality of a proposition it becomes impossible to establish the validity of inference.

        The step which the mind takes from the knowledge of smoke, etc, to the knowledge of fire, etc., can be accounted for by its being based on a former perception or by its being an error. Or in some cases this step is justified as accidental, just like the coincidence of effects observed in the employment of gems, charms, drugs, and so forth.

 

 

Spontaneity in Nature

 

9   From this it follows that fate and its various counterparts do not exist, since these can only be proved by inference. But an opponent will say, if you thus do not allow the existence of unseen forces the various phenomena of the world become destitute of any cause. But we cannot accept this objection as valid, since these phenomena can all be produced spontaneously from the inherent nature of things. Thus it has been said:

 

Fire is hot, water cold,

refreshingly cool is the breeze of morning;

By whom came this variety?

They were born of their own nature.

 

This also has been said by Brhaspati:

There is no heaven, no final liberation,

nor any soul in another world,

Nor do the actions of the four castes,

orders, or priesthoods produce any real effect.

 

If a beast slain as an offering to the dead

will itself go to heaven,

why does the sacrificer not straightway offer his father?

 

If offerings to the dead produce gratification

to those who have reached the land of the dead,

why the need to set out provisions

for travelers starting on this journey?

If our offering sacrifices here gratify beings in heaven,

why not make food offerings down below

to gratify those standing on housetops?

 

While life remains, let a man live happily,

let him feed on butter though he runs in debt;

When once the body becomes ashes,

how can it ever return again?

 

If he who departs from the body goes to another world,

why does he not come back again,

restless for love of his kinfolk?

It is only as a means of livelihood

that brahmins have established here

abundant ceremonies for the dead—

there is no other fruit anywhere.

 

Hence for kindness to the mass of living beings

we must fly for refuge in the doctrine of Carvaka.

 

 Sources

 

Adapted from Sarva-Darsana-Samgraha by Madhava Acharya, translated by E. B. Cowell and A. E. Gough.  Kegan Paul, Trench, and Trubner, London, 1914.

 

"An Assessment of the Millenium" by Amartya Sen. UNESCO Lecture, New Delhi, 1998

 Carvaka

 

The first, strongest and the extremist reaction against the Mimamsa school was expressed by Carvaka, who belonged to the later Vedic (Brdhmana, about 600 BC) times. He seems to have been called Lokayata and Brhaspati also. Lokayata literally means 'one who goes the worldly way'. We do not know how exactly the word Carvaka was derived. It is perhaps a combination of caru (sweet) and vak (speech) and so meant the 'sweet-tongued', because he taught what all human beings generally want, viz. that pleasure is the ultimate aim of life. Perhaps the two names, Lokayata and Carvaka, were his titles, and Brhaspati his original name. The Aphorisms (sutras) he composed also go by the name of Brhaspati-sutras. But Brhaspati was the name also of the priest of gods. And so tradition tells that this priest of gods propounded a rankly materialistic philosophy in order to mislead the enemies of gods, namely, the demons. However, the Brhaspati Aphorisms and also a commentary on them seem to have been irrecoverably lost. We find references to them in works of the rival schools up to the fourteenth century. The literature of this school is very scanty. We find only one systematic work on it, Jayarasi's Tattvopaplavasimha (The Lion that Devours all Categories) of the seventh century AD, which shows that no category (tattva) can be proved to be real, that nothing can be real except what we see with our senses, and that therefore everything that man does is justified. Thus the philosophy of Carvaka was turned into a philosophy supporting any immoral policy and action. However, we have no evidence to show that Carvaka himself went so far.

 

As a reaction against the whole of the Mimamsa teaching and claim, the Carvaka philosophy attacked almost every doctrine of the Mimamsakas - their epistemology, metaphysics, and way of life. It constituted a strong check on the excesses of speculation and practice of the followers of the Mimamsa.

 

EPISTEMOLOGY

 

Of the three important sources of knowledge accepted in common by all the orthodox schools (perception, inference, and verbal testimony), the Carvakas accepted only perception as the valid source of knowledge and rejected both inference and verbal testimony. Whatever we know through perception is true and real.

 

The Carvakas at first seem not to have been aware of the difficulties in accepting perception as a valid source of knowledge, which were pointed out later by the Buddhist and Vedanta dialecticians. The later Carvakas showed that they knew of the difficulties, but they did not discuss the implications of this question and maintained on the whole a realistic position.

 

It is interesting to note that, in their examination of inference, the Carvakas anticipated the European sceptics. They said that inference was not a valid source of knowledge, because the major premise of an inference cannot be proved. For example:

 

Wherever there is smoke, there is fire (Major premise);

This mountain has smoke (Minor premise) ;

There is fire in the mountain (Conclusion}.

 

This is the classical example of inference in Indian epistemology. The Carvakas ask: (i) How can we formulate the major premise unless we have seen all the instances of smoke? If we have not seen all the instances, how can we logically be justified in using the word 'wherever'? If we have seen all the instances, we must have seen the present case, viz. the mountain also. (2) Then what is the use of making an inference when we have already perceived that there is fire in the mountains? So the Carvakas say that inference is either impossible or unnecessary. Inference cannot yield truth.

 

But are not causal statements like 'Fire causes the bodies to expand' true? And they are universal propositions like the major premise. The Carvakas say that these causal laws also cannot be true. If we are able to apply causal laws and find them to be true, it is only an accident. In fact, there are no causal laws. Every event is a chance Everything comes into existence and passes out of it according to its own nature. Even this nature is not a universal law; it too may change.

 

On verbal testimony the Carvakas make a strong attack. Verbal knowledge is only knowledge of words and their meanings based upon inference. My friend says: 'The orange is red.' Now, through the established meanings of the four words, I infer that the object before the mind of my friend is an orange and that it is red. But it has already been pointed out that inference is a risky source of knowledge. And how can I be sure of the reliability of my friend? For either reason, verbal testimony is not a reliable source of knowledge. But are not the Vedas reliable? Whereas the Mimamsakas were greatly concerned to defend the reliability and authoritativeness of the Vedas, the Carvakas make their strongest attack on them. The Vedas are not reliable at all, because they are self-contradictory. 'At one place they enjoin on us not to commit any injury; but at another place they ask us to sacrifice animals to gods.' How can one believe that the killing of animals in sacrifices brings one merit?

 

The Mimamsakas say that sound is eternal, that is, the words of the Vedas and their meanings are eternally existing. But how can we believe that the word-sounds are eternal? There is no sound, when no one utters it. And it stays only when produced by the vocal organs. If it is said that its eternity can be proved by inference, we have already shown that inference is not reliable. And perception does not show that the word-sound can be eternal.

 

We must admit that the Carvaka theory of knowledge is not exactly scepticism or agnosticism, but a fairly thoroughgoing positivism. They accept the reality of whatever we can perceive with our senses and deny the reality of whatever we cannot so perceive. We should note also that they did not deny the formal validity of inference, because they used the very laws of inference to show that we could not obtain material truths about the world through inference. They questioned only how we could obtain the major premise, but they did not say that, even if we had the major premise, inference was wrong. They did not criticize the structure of the syllogism,but only wanted to show that it was utterly useless for obtaining any new truth about the world. In fact, they used the law of contradiction in refuting the doctrines of their rivals.

 

 

METAPHYSICS

 

The Mimamsakas maintain that the atman is eternal and that it is not the same as the body. But the Carvakas say that there is no such thing as the atman. We do not and cannot perceive the atman, and we cannot prove its existence with the help of inference, because inference is not a valid source of knowledge. The Carvakas say that consciousness is not due to the atman. When a man dies consciousness disappears and we cannot prove that it goes away and exists somewhere else. Being conscious is a peculiar quality of the living human body. It

can retain the consciousness so long as the physical parts are healthy and stay together in a certain form. Consciousness therefore is an emergent quality of the physical parts coming together in certain proportion. For instance, when yeast is mixed with certain juices, they become wine. The property of being wine is a new quality which yeast and juices obtain when mixed. Life also is only a new configuration of matter. Nothing but matter is real.

 

Therefore the atman or self-awareness is only the physical body with a new emergent quality. But do we not say, 'I have a handsome body, a tall body' and so on? If the 'I' is not different from the body, how can it say: 'I have such and such a body'? To this the Carvakas answer by saying that the use of 'have' in these expressions is only conventional, created by the false notion that the 'I' is different from the body.

 

The Carvakas speak of mind (manas), which, acccording to the Mimamsa, is different from the atman. But the Carvakas seem to think of mind as the consciousness in its knowing function, which of course is not separate from the body. The body along with its consciousness is the atman and consciousness in its experiencing function is the mind. Mind knows the external world through the senses.

 

The world is the material world only. According to the Carvakas, it does not consist of five elements, as the Mimamsa believes. Earth, water, fire, air, and ether are the usual five elements corresponding to the qualities smell, taste, colour, touch, and sound, and also corresponding to the five sense organs, nose, tongue, eye, touch, and ear. The first four elements are perceivable, but not ether. So the Carvakas deny the reality of ether. It was thought that the cause of sound in the ear was the all-pervading ether. But the Carvakas say that sound is caused by air touching the ear. It is due to the movement of air not of ether. The other four elements constitute the world. They consist of tiny particles, which are not, however, the invisible atoms of the Naiyayikas. The particles accepted by the Carvakas are visible particles; they could not accept the reality of anything that could not be perceived with the senses.

 

There is no external cause for the four elements coming together and obtaining the qualities of life and consciousness. It is their nature to come together and to have those qualities. But we cannot generalize on this process and establish a law that, whenever these four elements come together in certain ratio, life and consciousness will emerge. The elements may change their nature any time. We cannot, therefore say that Nature contains some eternal laws. Every event is a chance, and if it develops into something, then it develops according to its own particular nature. One may conclude that, according to the Carvakas, the existence of everything is a chance, and that there are no laws of nature, but every object has its own nature.

 

 

WAY OF LIFE

 

The concept of dhartna, as we have seen, is the central concept of the Mimamsa philosophy. But the Carvakas denied its validity. Action when completed, the Carvakas would say, ends there. Apurva or the latent potential form, which action takes, or merit and demerit cannot be perceived at all by anyone. They are therefore not real. It is foolish to think that past actions become a kind of unseen force (adrsta) and determine our future births. In fact, there is no rebirth. We have only one birth and that is the present one. If there is rebirth, we ought to remember it. No one remembers his previous births.

 

Accepting only perception as the valid source of knowledge, the Carvakas rejected the reality of God. No one has ever seen God and no one can see him. The minor gods also do not exist. They and the Vedas belong to the imagination of crafty priests, who invented them to make a living out of them by officiating at sacrifices, and to awe people into obedience by saying that God would punish them, if they did not follow the Vedas. There is no heaven, no hell, no God, and there are no objective ethical laws. The only laws binding on man are the laws of the state, obedience to which brings rewards and disobedience of which brings punishment. And the science (sastra) of the laws of state is the only science worth studying.

 

What is meant by heaven is the pleasure we have in eating, drinking, singing and in the company and embrace of women. And hell is the pain we experience in this world itself. There is no point in trying to obtain salvation and a life of eternal quietude; there is an end to life at death and all will be quietude then. The differences between castes and their distinctive duties are falsely laid down by interested persons. There are no objective ethical laws, so one can do what one likes, provided he is careful that his actions do not bring pain as a consequence.

 

The religion of sacrifices is false and is propagated only by interested priests. The life of the monk belongs only to impotent persons. If the animal offered in sacrifice goes to heaven, why should not man offer his parents in sacrifice instead and send them to heaven? Really, the priests do not believe in what they preach. They tell us that the offerings made in this world on death anniversaries of the ancestors satisfy their hunger and thirst in the other world. If so, an extinguished flame in one lamp should burn, when oil is poured in another. To the people gone it is useless to make food offerings; one may as well offer food in his house to a person that has already left the house for another village. There is no soul that leaves the body after death and goes to the other world; otherwise, because of its attachment to its family and friends, it ought to come back to this very body. Life belongs only to this world and ends in this world. There is no other world. Man should try to make the best of this life, without believing in all that the Brahmanic religion teaches. The teachings of the Veda are those of fools, rogues, or demons. The priests tell us not to injure life, but because they are fond of flesh like the demons - nisacaras or night-wanderers, whom the Aryans found to be eating dirty, raw flesh and called them demons - they find an exception for themselves when eating the flesh of the animal burnt in sacrifice. These priests should not be trusted and man should do whatever is possible to enhance his pleasure and avoid pain. And any action done for the sake of pleasure is justified.

 

The Carvakas do not seem to have recommended pleasures of the moment, because pleasures of the moment and over-indulgance may result in pain and pain has to be avoided. It is also said that, because pleasure is associated with fine arts like music, they encouraged them and contributed much for their development. And because they were averse to killing animals, some of the Carvakas are believed to be vegetarians.

 

But the peculiar contribution which this philosophy seems to have made to the philosophy of life, was the philosophical justification it tried to supply to any kind of action for the sake of pleasure. Of course, pleasure is not possible without wealth (artha). By spending money we can obtain pleasure (kama). The value of dhartna (duty) and the value of salvation (moksa) were rejected by this school. But how can we obtain wealth for the pleasures we want? Does what we do for obtaining wealth have to follow any objective ethical laws?

 

Nothing is recognized by this school as a duty. A man can do anything - beg, borrow, steal or murder - in order to have more wealth and more pleasure. But the state laws prevent a man from doing whatever he likes and punishes him when he disobeys them. If he is clever enough to circumvent them, then his action is justified. Otherwise, he should follow them to avoid the pain of punishment. Kings, who have the power over the state's laws, themselves can do whatever they like and do anything for increasing their wealth, power, pleasure and dominion. Thus the Carvaka philosophy was later made to support what in Europe was called Machiavellian olicies of princes. Jayarasi calls his exposition of the Carvaka philosophy 'the supporter of the value, wealth.' Wealth (artha) is one of the four values of life recognized by Indian philosophers — wealth (artha), pleasure (kama), duty (dharma), and salvation (moksa).Introduction

 The system of philosophy named after its founder, Carvaka, was set out in the Brhaspati Sutra in India probably about 600 BCE. This text has not survived and, like similar philosophies in Greece, much of what we know of it comes from polemics against it and remarks by its critics. There is a further similarity with Greece in that this is a rationalistic and skeptical philosophy, thus undermining the widespread belief in the West that Indian philosophy is primarily religious and mystical. Amartya Sen has argued, in fact, that there is a larger volume of atheistic and agnostic writings in Pali and Sanskrit than in any other classical tradition—Greek, Latin, Hebrew, or Arabic. He adds that this applies also to Buddhism, the only agnostic world religion ever to emerge.

 Carvaka’s philosophy developed at a time when religious dogma concerning our knowledge of reality, the constitution of the world, and the concept of an afterlife were being increasingly questioned, both in India and elsewhere. Specifically, the school of Carvaka contained within itself a materialism that ruled out the supernatural (lokayata), naturalism (all phenomena described in terms of the properties of the four elements), rejection of the Vedas (nastika), and a skepticism that included rejection of inferential logic, or induction.

 One of the best sources for Carvaka’s atheistic argument happens to be a book, Sarvadarshansamgraha (the collection of all philosophies), written in the Fourteenth Century by Madhavacarya, a Vaishnavite (Hindhu) scholar. Extracts from this are provided below.

 Only the Material World Exists

 

1   The efforts of Carvaka are indeed hard to eradicate, for the majority of living beings endorse the current refrain—

While life is yours live joyously;

No one can avoid Death's searching eye:

When this body of ours is burnt,

How can it ever return again?

In accordance with the dictates of policy and enjoyment, the mass of men consider wealth and satisfaction of desire the only ends of man. They deny the existence of any object belonging to a future world, and follow only the doctrine of Carvaka. Hence another name for that school is Lokayata—a name well accordant with the thing signified [that only the material world, loka, exists].

 

 

Pleasure and Pain

 

2   The only end of man is enjoyment produced by sensual pleasures. Nor may you say that such cannot be called the end of man as they are always mixed with some kind of pain, because it is our wisdom to enjoy the pure pleasure as far as we can, and to avoid the pain which inevitably accompanies it. Thus the man who desires fish takes the fish with their scales and bones, and having eaten the parts he wants, desists. Or the man who desires rice, takes the rice, straw and all, and having taken that which he wants, desists. It is not therefore for us, through a fear of pain, to reject the pleasure which our nature instinctively recognizes as congenial. Men do not refrain from sowing rice because there happen to be wild animals to devour it; nor do they refuse to set the cooking-pots on the fire, because there happen to be beggars to pester us for a share of the contents.

        If any one were so timid as to forsake a visible pleasure, he would indeed be foolish like a beast, as has been said by the poet—

That the pleasure arising to man

from contact with sensible objects,

is to be relinquished because accompanied by pain—

such is the reasoning of fools.

The kernels of the paddy, rich with finest white grains,

What man, seeking his own true interest,

would fling them away

because of a covering of husk and dust?

 

Ritual as a Livelihood

 

3   If you object that, if there be no such thing as happiness in a future world, then why should men of experience and wisdom engage in the sacrificial offering to fire and other phenomena, which can only be performed with great expenditure of money and bodily fatigue? Alas, your objection cannot be accepted as any proof to the contrary, since the sacrificial offerings are only useful as means of livelihood.

      The Veda is tainted by the three faults of untruth, self-contradiction, and tautology. The impostors who call themselves Vedic scholars are mutually destructive, as the authority of the chapter on knowledge is overthrown by those who maintain the authority of the chapter on action. Conversely those who maintain the authority of the chapter on knowledge reject that on action. Lastly, the three Vedas themselves are only the incoherent rhapsodies of rascals, and to this effect runs the popular saying—

 

          The Sacrifices, the three Vedas, the ascetic's three staves,

              and smearing oneself with ashes—

          Brhaspati says these are but means of livelihood

              for those who have no manliness nor sense.

 

Hell as Mundane

 

4   Hence it follows that there is no other hell than the mundane pain produced by purely mundane causes, such as thorns and so forth. The only supreme being is the earthly monarch whose existence is proved by all the world's eyesight. And the only liberation is the dissolution of the body. By holding the doctrine that the soul is identical with the body, such phrases as "I am thin", or "I am black," are at once intelligible as the body’s attributes of thinness or blackness. In a similar way, self-consciousness will reside in the same subject.

 

 

Intelligence Resides in the Body

 

5   In this school the four elements, earth, fire, water and air are the original principles. From these alone, when transformed into the body, intelligence is produced—just as the intoxicating power of some herbs is developed from the mixing of certain ingredients. When the body is destroyed, intelligence at once perishes also. They quote the Vedic text for this:

 

    Springing forth from these elements itself

    solid knowledge is destroyed

    when they are destroyed—

    after death no intelligence remains.

 

Therefore the soul is only the body distinguished by the attribute of intelligence, since there is no evidence for any self distinct from the body. Therefore the existence of such a separate self cannot be proved, because this school holds that perception is the only source of knowledge and does not allow inference as an alternative source.

 

 

No Logical Basis for Inference

 

6   "It could be," says an opponent of this view; "that your wish would be gained if inference, or logic, had no force of proof; but they do have this force. If they had not, then how, on perceiving smoke, should the thoughts of the intelligent immediately proceed to fire. Or why, on hearing another say, "There are fruits on the bank of the river," do those who desire fruit go off at once to the shore?"

     All this, however, is only the inflation of the world of fancy. Those who maintain the authority of inference accept the sign or middle term as the causer of knowledge, which middle term must be found in the minor and be itself invariably connected with the major. Now this invariable connection must be a relation destitute of any condition accepted or disputed. This connection does not possess its power of causing inference by virtue of its existence, as the eye or other sense organs are the cause of perception, but by virtue of its being known. What then is the means of this connection being known? We will first show that it is not perception, which is held to be of two kinds, external and internal.

     External perception is not the required means; for although it is possible that the actual contact of the senses and the object will produce the knowledge of the particular object thus brought in contact, yet as there can never be such contact in the case of the past or the future, the universal proposition which was to embrace the invariable connection of the middle and major terms in every case becomes impossible to be known.

      Nor may you maintain that this knowledge of the universal proposition has the general class as its object, because, if so, there might arise a doubt as to the existence of the invariable connection in this particular case.

      Nor is internal perception the means, since you cannot establish that the mind has any power to act independently towards an external object, since all allow that it is dependent on the external senses. As has been said by one of the logicians, "The eye and other sense organs have their objects as described; but mind externally is dependent on the others." Nor can inference be the means of the knowledge of the universal proposition, since in the case of this inference we should also require another inference to establish it, and so on, and hence would arise the fallacy of an infinite regression.

 

 

Testimony as no Basis for Inference

 

7   Nor can testimony be the means thereof, since we may either allege in reply, in accordance with the Vaisesika doctrine of Kanada, that this is included in the topic of inference; or else we may hold that this fresh proof of testimony is unable to leap over the old barrier that stopped the progress of inference, since it depends itself on the recognition of a sign in the form of the language used in a child's presence by an old man. Moreover, there is no more reason for our believing on another's word that smoke and fire are invariably connected than for our receiving the unsupported assertion of the existence of Manu [a mythical being with no body] and the like.

        And again, if testimony were to be accepted as the only means of the knowledge of the universal proposition, then in the case of a man to whom the fact of the invariable connection between the middle and major terms had not been pointed out by another person, there could be no inference of one thing, such as fire, on seeing another, such as smoke. Hence, on your own showing, the whole topic of inference for oneself would have to end in mere idle words.

 

 

Comparison no Basis for Inference

 

8   Then again, comparison and the like must be utterly rejected as the means of the knowledge of the universal proposition, since it is impossible that they can produce the knowledge of this invariable connection, because their end is to produce the knowledge of quite another connection, namely, the relation of a name to something so named.

        Again, this same absence of a condition, which has been given as the definition of an invariable connection or universal proposition, can itself never be known; since it is impossible to establish that all conditions must be objects of perception. Therefore, although the absence of perceptible things may be itself perceptible, the absence of non-perceptible things must be itself non-perceptible; and thus, since we must here too have recourse to inference, we cannot leap over the obstacle which has already been planted to bar this.

        But since the knowledge of the condition must here precede the knowledge of the condition's absence, it is only when there is the knowledge of the condition that the knowledge of the universality of the proposition is possible, i.e., a knowledge in the form of such a connection between the middle term and major term as is distinguished by the absence of any such condition; and, on the other hand, the knowledge of the condition depends upon the knowledge of the invariable connection. Thus we fasten on our opponents, as with adamantine glue, the thunderbolt-like fallacy of reasoning in a circle. Hence by the impossibility of knowing the universality of a proposition it becomes impossible to establish the validity of inference.

        The step which the mind takes from the knowledge of smoke, etc, to the knowledge of fire, etc., can be accounted for by its being based on a former perception or by its being an error. Or in some cases this step is justified as accidental, just like the coincidence of effects observed in the employment of gems, charms, drugs, and so forth.

 

 

Spontaneity in Nature

 

9   From this it follows that fate and its various counterparts do not exist, since these can only be proved by inference. But an opponent will say, if you thus do not allow the existence of unseen forces the various phenomena of the world become destitute of any cause. But we cannot accept this objection as valid, since these phenomena can all be produced spontaneously from the inherent nature of things. Thus it has been said:

 

Fire is hot, water cold,

refreshingly cool is the breeze of morning;

By whom came this variety?

They were born of their own nature.

 

This also has been said by Brhaspati:

There is no heaven, no final liberation,

nor any soul in another world,

Nor do the actions of the four castes,

orders, or priesthoods produce any real effect.

 

If a beast slain as an offering to the dead

will itself go to heaven,

why does the sacrificer not straightway offer his father?

 

If offerings to the dead produce gratification

to those who have reached the land of the dead,

why the need to set out provisions

for travelers starting on this journey?

If our offering sacrifices here gratify beings in heaven,

why not make food offerings down below

to gratify those standing on housetops?

 

While life remains, let a man live happily,

let him feed on butter though he runs in debt;

When once the body becomes ashes,

how can it ever return again?

 

If he who departs from the body goes to another world,

why does he not come back again,

restless for love of his kinfolk?

It is only as a means of livelihood

that brahmins have established here

abundant ceremonies for the dead—

there is no other fruit anywhere.

 

Hence for kindness to the mass of living beings

we must fly for refuge in the doctrine of Carvaka.

 

 Sources

 

Adapted from Sarva-Darsana-Samgraha by Madhava Acharya, translated by E. B. Cowell and A. E. Gough.  Kegan Paul, Trench, and Trubner, London, 1914.

 

"An Assessment of the Millenium" by Amartya Sen. UNESCO Lecture, New Delhi, 1998

 Carvaka

 

The first, strongest and the extremist reaction against the Mimamsa school was expressed by Carvaka, who belonged to the later Vedic (Brdhmana, about 600 BC) times. He seems to have been called Lokayata and Brhaspati also. Lokayata literally means 'one who goes the worldly way'. We do not know how exactly the word Carvaka was derived. It is perhaps a combination of caru (sweet) and vak (speech) and so meant the 'sweet-tongued', because he taught what all human beings generally want, viz. that pleasure is the ultimate aim of life. Perhaps the two names, Lokayata and Carvaka, were his titles, and Brhaspati his original name. The Aphorisms (sutras) he composed also go by the name of Brhaspati-sutras. But Brhaspati was the name also of the priest of gods. And so tradition tells that this priest of gods propounded a rankly materialistic philosophy in order to mislead the enemies of gods, namely, the demons. However, the Brhaspati Aphorisms and also a commentary on them seem to have been irrecoverably lost. We find references to them in works of the rival schools up to the fourteenth century. The literature of this school is very scanty. We find only one systematic work on it, Jayarasi's Tattvopaplavasimha (The Lion that Devours all Categories) of the seventh century AD, which shows that no category (tattva) can be proved to be real, that nothing can be real except what we see with our senses, and that therefore everything that man does is justified. Thus the philosophy of Carvaka was turned into a philosophy supporting any immoral policy and action. However, we have no evidence to show that Carvaka himself went so far.

 

As a reaction against the whole of the Mimamsa teaching and claim, the Carvaka philosophy attacked almost every doctrine of the Mimamsakas - their epistemology, metaphysics, and way of life. It constituted a strong check on the excesses of speculation and practice of the followers of the Mimamsa.

 

EPISTEMOLOGY

 

Of the three important sources of knowledge accepted in common by all the orthodox schools (perception, inference, and verbal testimony), the Carvakas accepted only perception as the valid source of knowledge and rejected both inference and verbal testimony. Whatever we know through perception is true and real.

 

The Carvakas at first seem not to have been aware of the difficulties in accepting perception as a valid source of knowledge, which were pointed out later by the Buddhist and Vedanta dialecticians. The later Carvakas showed that they knew of the difficulties, but they did not discuss the implications of this question and maintained on the whole a realistic position.

 

It is interesting to note that, in their examination of inference, the Carvakas anticipated the European sceptics. They said that inference was not a valid source of knowledge, because the major premise of an inference cannot be proved. For example:

 

Wherever there is smoke, there is fire (Major premise);

This mountain has smoke (Minor premise) ;

There is fire in the mountain (Conclusion}.

 

This is the classical example of inference in Indian epistemology. The Carvakas ask: (i) How can we formulate the major premise unless we have seen all the instances of smoke? If we have not seen all the instances, how can we logically be justified in using the word 'wherever'? If we have seen all the instances, we must have seen the present case, viz. the mountain also. (2) Then what is the use of making an inference when we have already perceived that there is fire in the mountains? So the Carvakas say that inference is either impossible or unnecessary. Inference cannot yield truth.

 

But are not causal statements like 'Fire causes the bodies to expand' true? And they are universal propositions like the major premise. The Carvakas say that these causal laws also cannot be true. If we are able to apply causal laws and find them to be true, it is only an accident. In fact, there are no causal laws. Every event is a chance Everything comes into existence and passes out of it according to its own nature. Even this nature is not a universal law; it too may change.

 

On verbal testimony the Carvakas make a strong attack. Verbal knowledge is only knowledge of words and their meanings based upon inference. My friend says: 'The orange is red.' Now, through the established meanings of the four words, I infer that the object before the mind of my friend is an orange and that it is red. But it has already been pointed out that inference is a risky source of knowledge. And how can I be sure of the reliability of my friend? For either reason, verbal testimony is not a reliable source of knowledge. But are not the Vedas reliable? Whereas the Mimamsakas were greatly concerned to defend the reliability and authoritativeness of the Vedas, the Carvakas make their strongest attack on them. The Vedas are not reliable at all, because they are self-contradictory. 'At one place they enjoin on us not to commit any injury; but at another place they ask us to sacrifice animals to gods.' How can one believe that the killing of animals in sacrifices brings one merit?

 

The Mimamsakas say that sound is eternal, that is, the words of the Vedas and their meanings are eternally existing. But how can we believe that the word-sounds are eternal? There is no sound, when no one utters it. And it stays only when produced by the vocal organs. If it is said that its eternity can be proved by inference, we have already shown that inference is not reliable. And perception does not show that the word-sound can be eternal.

 

We must admit that the Carvaka theory of knowledge is not exactly scepticism or agnosticism, but a fairly thoroughgoing positivism. They accept the reality of whatever we can perceive with our senses and deny the reality of whatever we cannot so perceive. We should note also that they did not deny the formal validity of inference, because they used the very laws of inference to show that we could not obtain material truths about the world through inference. They questioned only how we could obtain the major premise, but they did not say that, even if we had the major premise, inference was wrong. They did not criticize the structure of the syllogism,but only wanted to show that it was utterly useless for obtaining any new truth about the world. In fact, they used the law of contradiction in refuting the doctrines of their rivals.

 

 

METAPHYSICS

 

The Mimamsakas maintain that the atman is eternal and that it is not the same as the body. But the Carvakas say that there is no such thing as the atman. We do not and cannot perceive the atman, and we cannot prove its existence with the help of inference, because inference is not a valid source of knowledge. The Carvakas say that consciousness is not due to the atman. When a man dies consciousness disappears and we cannot prove that it goes away and exists somewhere else. Being conscious is a peculiar quality of the living human body. It

can retain the consciousness so long as the physical parts are healthy and stay together in a certain form. Consciousness therefore is an emergent quality of the physical parts coming together in certain proportion. For instance, when yeast is mixed with certain juices, they become wine. The property of being wine is a new quality which yeast and juices obtain when mixed. Life also is only a new configuration of matter. Nothing but matter is real.

 

Therefore the atman or self-awareness is only the physical body with a new emergent quality. But do we not say, 'I have a handsome body, a tall body' and so on? If the 'I' is not different from the body, how can it say: 'I have such and such a body'? To this the Carvakas answer by saying that the use of 'have' in these expressions is only conventional, created by the false notion that the 'I' is different from the body.

 

The Carvakas speak of mind (manas), which, acccording to the Mimamsa, is different from the atman. But the Carvakas seem to think of mind as the consciousness in its knowing function, which of course is not separate from the body. The body along with its consciousness is the atman and consciousness in its experiencing function is the mind. Mind knows the external world through the senses.

 

The world is the material world only. According to the Carvakas, it does not consist of five elements, as the Mimamsa believes. Earth, water, fire, air, and ether are the usual five elements corresponding to the qualities smell, taste, colour, touch, and sound, and also corresponding to the five sense organs, nose, tongue, eye, touch, and ear. The first four elements are perceivable, but not ether. So the Carvakas deny the reality of ether. It was thought that the cause of sound in the ear was the all-pervading ether. But the Carvakas say that sound is caused by air touching the ear. It is due to the movement of air not of ether. The other four elements constitute the world. They consist of tiny particles, which are not, however, the invisible atoms of the Naiyayikas. The particles accepted by the Carvakas are visible particles; they could not accept the reality of anything that could not be perceived with the senses.

 

There is no external cause for the four elements coming together and obtaining the qualities of life and consciousness. It is their nature to come together and to have those qualities. But we cannot generalize on this process and establish a law that, whenever these four elements come together in certain ratio, life and consciousness will emerge. The elements may change their nature any time. We cannot, therefore say that Nature contains some eternal laws. Every event is a chance, and if it develops into something, then it develops according to its own particular nature. One may conclude that, according to the Carvakas, the existence of everything is a chance, and that there are no laws of nature, but every object has its own nature.

 

 

WAY OF LIFE

 

The concept of dhartna, as we have seen, is the central concept of the Mimamsa philosophy. But the Carvakas denied its validity. Action when completed, the Carvakas would say, ends there. Apurva or the latent potential form, which action takes, or merit and demerit cannot be perceived at all by anyone. They are therefore not real. It is foolish to think that past actions become a kind of unseen force (adrsta) and determine our future births. In fact, there is no rebirth. We have only one birth and that is the present one. If there is rebirth, we ought to remember it. No one remembers his previous births.

 

Accepting only perception as the valid source of knowledge, the Carvakas rejected the reality of God. No one has ever seen God and no one can see him. The minor gods also do not exist. They and the Vedas belong to the imagination of crafty priests, who invented them to make a living out of them by officiating at sacrifices, and to awe people into obedience by saying that God would punish them, if they did not follow the Vedas. There is no heaven, no hell, no God, and there are no objective ethical laws. The only laws binding on man are the laws of the state, obedience to which brings rewards and disobedience of which brings punishment. And the science (sastra) of the laws of state is the only science worth studying.

 

What is meant by heaven is the pleasure we have in eating, drinking, singing and in the company and embrace of women. And hell is the pain we experience in this world itself. There is no point in trying to obtain salvation and a life of eternal quietude; there is an end to life at death and all will be quietude then. The differences between castes and their distinctive duties are falsely laid down by interested persons. There are no objective ethical laws, so one can do what one likes, provided he is careful that his actions do not bring pain as a consequence.

 

The religion of sacrifices is false and is propagated only by interested priests. The life of the monk belongs only to impotent persons. If the animal offered in sacrifice goes to heaven, why should not man offer his parents in sacrifice instead and send them to heaven? Really, the priests do not believe in what they preach. They tell us that the offerings made in this world on death anniversaries of the ancestors satisfy their hunger and thirst in the other world. If so, an extinguished flame in one lamp should burn, when oil is poured in another. To the people gone it is useless to make food offerings; one may as well offer food in his house to a person that has already left the house for another village. There is no soul that leaves the body after death and goes to the other world; otherwise, because of its attachment to its family and friends, it ought to come back to this very body. Life belongs only to this world and ends in this world. There is no other world. Man should try to make the best of this life, without believing in all that the Brahmanic religion teaches. The teachings of the Veda are those of fools, rogues, or demons. The priests tell us not to injure life, but because they are fond of flesh like the demons - nisacaras or night-wanderers, whom the Aryans found to be eating dirty, raw flesh and called them demons - they find an exception for themselves when eating the flesh of the animal burnt in sacrifice. These priests should not be trusted and man should do whatever is possible to enhance his pleasure and avoid pain. And any action done for the sake of pleasure is justified.

 

The Carvakas do not seem to have recommended pleasures of the moment, because pleasures of the moment and over-indulgance may result in pain and pain has to be avoided. It is also said that, because pleasure is associated with fine arts like music, they encouraged them and contributed much for their development. And because they were averse to killing animals, some of the Carvakas are believed to be vegetarians.

 

But the peculiar contribution which this philosophy seems to have made to the philosophy of life, was the philosophical justification it tried to supply to any kind of action for the sake of pleasure. Of course, pleasure is not possible without wealth (artha). By spending money we can obtain pleasure (kama). The value of dhartna (duty) and the value of salvation (moksa) were rejected by this school. But how can we obtain wealth for the pleasures we want? Does what we do for obtaining wealth have to follow any objective ethical laws?

 

Nothing is recognized by this school as a duty. A man can do anything - beg, borrow, steal or murder - in order to have more wealth and more pleasure. But the state laws prevent a man from doing whatever he likes and punishes him when he disobeys them. If he is clever enough to circumvent them, then his action is justified. Otherwise, he should follow them to avoid the pain of punishment. Kings, who have the power over the state's laws, themselves can do whatever they like and do anything for increasing their wealth, power, pleasure and dominion. Thus the Carvaka philosophy was later made to support what in Europe was called Machiavellian olicies of princes. Jayarasi calls his exposition of the Carvaka philosophy 'the supporter of the value, wealth.' Wealth (artha) is one of the four values of life recognized by Indian philosophers — wealth (artha), pleasure (kama), duty (dharma), and salvation (moksa).Introduction

 The system of philosophy named after its founder, Carvaka, was set out in the Brhaspati Sutra in India probably about 600 BCE. This text has not survived and, like similar philosophies in Greece, much of what we know of it comes from polemics against it and remarks by its critics. There is a further similarity with Greece in that this is a rationalistic and skeptical philosophy, thus undermining the widespread belief in the West that Indian philosophy is primarily religious and mystical. Amartya Sen has argued, in fact, that there is a larger volume of atheistic and agnostic writings in Pali and Sanskrit than in any other classical tradition—Greek, Latin, Hebrew, or Arabic. He adds that this applies also to Buddhism, the only agnostic world religion ever to emerge.

 Carvaka’s philosophy developed at a time when religious dogma concerning our knowledge of reality, the constitution of the world, and the concept of an afterlife were being increasingly questioned, both in India and elsewhere. Specifically, the school of Carvaka contained within itself a materialism that ruled out the supernatural (lokayata), naturalism (all phenomena described in terms of the properties of the four elements), rejection of the Vedas (nastika), and a skepticism that included rejection of inferential logic, or induction.

 One of the best sources for Carvaka’s atheistic argument happens to be a book, Sarvadarshansamgraha (the collection of all philosophies), written in the Fourteenth Century by Madhavacarya, a Vaishnavite (Hindhu) scholar. Extracts from this are provided below.

 Only the Material World Exists

 

1   The efforts of Carvaka are indeed hard to eradicate, for the majority of living beings endorse the current refrain—

While life is yours live joyously;

No one can avoid Death's searching eye:

When this body of ours is burnt,

How can it ever return again?

In accordance with the dictates of policy and enjoyment, the mass of men consider wealth and satisfaction of desire the only ends of man. They deny the existence of any object belonging to a future world, and follow only the doctrine of Carvaka. Hence another name for that school is Lokayata—a name well accordant with the thing signified [that only the material world, loka, exists].

 

 

Pleasure and Pain

 

2   The only end of man is enjoyment produced by sensual pleasures. Nor may you say that such cannot be called the end of man as they are always mixed with some kind of pain, because it is our wisdom to enjoy the pure pleasure as far as we can, and to avoid the pain which inevitably accompanies it. Thus the man who desires fish takes the fish with their scales and bones, and having eaten the parts he wants, desists. Or the man who desires rice, takes the rice, straw and all, and having taken that which he wants, desists. It is not therefore for us, through a fear of pain, to reject the pleasure which our nature instinctively recognizes as congenial. Men do not refrain from sowing rice because there happen to be wild animals to devour it; nor do they refuse to set the cooking-pots on the fire, because there happen to be beggars to pester us for a share of the contents.

        If any one were so timid as to forsake a visible pleasure, he would indeed be foolish like a beast, as has been said by the poet—

That the pleasure arising to man

from contact with sensible objects,

is to be relinquished because accompanied by pain—

such is the reasoning of fools.

The kernels of the paddy, rich with finest white grains,

What man, seeking his own true interest,

would fling them away

because of a covering of husk and dust?

 

Ritual as a Livelihood

 

3   If you object that, if there be no such thing as happiness in a future world, then why should men of experience and wisdom engage in the sacrificial offering to fire and other phenomena, which can only be performed with great expenditure of money and bodily fatigue? Alas, your objection cannot be accepted as any proof to the contrary, since the sacrificial offerings are only useful as means of livelihood.

      The Veda is tainted by the three faults of untruth, self-contradiction, and tautology. The impostors who call themselves Vedic scholars are mutually destructive, as the authority of the chapter on knowledge is overthrown by those who maintain the authority of the chapter on action. Conversely those who maintain the authority of the chapter on knowledge reject that on action. Lastly, the three Vedas themselves are only the incoherent rhapsodies of rascals, and to this effect runs the popular saying—

 

          The Sacrifices, the three Vedas, the ascetic's three staves,

              and smearing oneself with ashes—

          Brhaspati says these are but means of livelihood

              for those who have no manliness nor sense.

 

Hell as Mundane

 

4   Hence it follows that there is no other hell than the mundane pain produced by purely mundane causes, such as thorns and so forth. The only supreme being is the earthly monarch whose existence is proved by all the world's eyesight. And the only liberation is the dissolution of the body. By holding the doctrine that the soul is identical with the body, such phrases as "I am thin", or "I am black," are at once intelligible as the body’s attributes of thinness or blackness. In a similar way, self-consciousness will reside in the same subject.

 

 

Intelligence Resides in the Body

 

5   In this school the four elements, earth, fire, water and air are the original principles. From these alone, when transformed into the body, intelligence is produced—just as the intoxicating power of some herbs is developed from the mixing of certain ingredients. When the body is destroyed, intelligence at once perishes also. They quote the Vedic text for this:

 

    Springing forth from these elements itself

    solid knowledge is destroyed

    when they are destroyed—

    after death no intelligence remains.

 

Therefore the soul is only the body distinguished by the attribute of intelligence, since there is no evidence for any self distinct from the body. Therefore the existence of such a separate self cannot be proved, because this school holds that perception is the only source of knowledge and does not allow inference as an alternative source.

 

 

No Logical Basis for Inference

 

6   "It could be," says an opponent of this view; "that your wish would be gained if inference, or logic, had no force of proof; but they do have this force. If they had not, then how, on perceiving smoke, should the thoughts of the intelligent immediately proceed to fire. Or why, on hearing another say, "There are fruits on the bank of the river," do those who desire fruit go off at once to the shore?"

     All this, however, is only the inflation of the world of fancy. Those who maintain the authority of inference accept the sign or middle term as the causer of knowledge, which middle term must be found in the minor and be itself invariably connected with the major. Now this invariable connection must be a relation destitute of any condition accepted or disputed. This connection does not possess its power of causing inference by virtue of its existence, as the eye or other sense organs are the cause of perception, but by virtue of its being known. What then is the means of this connection being known? We will first show that it is not perception, which is held to be of two kinds, external and internal.

     External perception is not the required means; for although it is possible that the actual contact of the senses and the object will produce the knowledge of the particular object thus brought in contact, yet as there can never be such contact in the case of the past or the future, the universal proposition which was to embrace the invariable connection of the middle and major terms in every case becomes impossible to be known.

      Nor may you maintain that this knowledge of the universal proposition has the general class as its object, because, if so, there might arise a doubt as to the existence of the invariable connection in this particular case.

      Nor is internal perception the means, since you cannot establish that the mind has any power to act independently towards an external object, since all allow that it is dependent on the external senses. As has been said by one of the logicians, "The eye and other sense organs have their objects as described; but mind externally is dependent on the others." Nor can inference be the means of the knowledge of the universal proposition, since in the case of this inference we should also require another inference to establish it, and so on, and hence would arise the fallacy of an infinite regression.

 

 

Testimony as no Basis for Inference

 

7   Nor can testimony be the means thereof, since we may either allege in reply, in accordance with the Vaisesika doctrine of Kanada, that this is included in the topic of inference; or else we may hold that this fresh proof of testimony is unable to leap over the old barrier that stopped the progress of inference, since it depends itself on the recognition of a sign in the form of the language used in a child's presence by an old man. Moreover, there is no more reason for our believing on another's word that smoke and fire are invariably connected than for our receiving the unsupported assertion of the existence of Manu [a mythical being with no body] and the like.

        And again, if testimony were to be accepted as the only means of the knowledge of the universal proposition, then in the case of a man to whom the fact of the invariable connection between the middle and major terms had not been pointed out by another person, there could be no inference of one thing, such as fire, on seeing another, such as smoke. Hence, on your own showing, the whole topic of inference for oneself would have to end in mere idle words.

 

 

Comparison no Basis for Inference

 

8   Then again, comparison and the like must be utterly rejected as the means of the knowledge of the universal proposition, since it is impossible that they can produce the knowledge of this invariable connection, because their end is to produce the knowledge of quite another connection, namely, the relation of a name to something so named.

        Again, this same absence of a condition, which has been given as the definition of an invariable connection or universal proposition, can itself never be known; since it is impossible to establish that all conditions must be objects of perception. Therefore, although the absence of perceptible things may be itself perceptible, the absence of non-perceptible things must be itself non-perceptible; and thus, since we must here too have recourse to inference, we cannot leap over the obstacle which has already been planted to bar this.

        But since the knowledge of the condition must here precede the knowledge of the condition's absence, it is only when there is the knowledge of the condition that the knowledge of the universality of the proposition is possible, i.e., a knowledge in the form of such a connection between the middle term and major term as is distinguished by the absence of any such condition; and, on the other hand, the knowledge of the condition depends upon the knowledge of the invariable connection. Thus we fasten on our opponents, as with adamantine glue, the thunderbolt-like fallacy of reasoning in a circle. Hence by the impossibility of knowing the universality of a proposition it becomes impossible to establish the validity of inference.

        The step which the mind takes from the knowledge of smoke, etc, to the knowledge of fire, etc., can be accounted for by its being based on a former perception or by its being an error. Or in some cases this step is justified as accidental, just like the coincidence of effects observed in the employment of gems, charms, drugs, and so forth.

 

 

Spontaneity in Nature

 

9   From this it follows that fate and its various counterparts do not exist, since these can only be proved by inference. But an opponent will say, if you thus do not allow the existence of unseen forces the various phenomena of the world become destitute of any cause. But we cannot accept this objection as valid, since these phenomena can all be produced spontaneously from the inherent nature of things. Thus it has been said:

 

Fire is hot, water cold,

refreshingly cool is the breeze of morning;

By whom came this variety?

They were born of their own nature.

 

This also has been said by Brhaspati:

There is no heaven, no final liberation,

nor any soul in another world,

Nor do the actions of the four castes,

orders, or priesthoods produce any real effect.

 

If a beast slain as an offering to the dead

will itself go to heaven,

why does the sacrificer not straightway offer his father?

 

If offerings to the dead produce gratification

to those who have reached the land of the dead,

why the need to set out provisions

for travelers starting on this journey?

If our offering sacrifices here gratify beings in heaven,

why not make food offerings down below

to gratify those standing on housetops?

 

While life remains, let a man live happily,

let him feed on butter though he runs in debt;

When once the body becomes ashes,

how can it ever return again?

 

If he who departs from the body goes to another world,

why does he not come back again,

restless for love of his kinfolk?

It is only as a means of livelihood

that brahmins have established here

abundant ceremonies for the dead—

there is no other fruit anywhere.

 

Hence for kindness to the mass of living beings

we must fly for refuge in the doctrine of Carvaka.

 

 Sources

 

Adapted from Sarva-Darsana-Samgraha by Madhava Acharya, translated by E. B. Cowell and A. E. Gough.  Kegan Paul, Trench, and Trubner, London, 1914.

 

"An Assessment of the Millenium" by Amartya Sen. UNESCO Lecture, New Delhi, 1998

 Carvaka

 

The first, strongest and the extremist reaction against the Mimamsa school was expressed by Carvaka, who belonged to the later Vedic (Brdhmana, about 600 BC) times. He seems to have been called Lokayata and Brhaspati also. Lokayata literally means 'one who goes the worldly way'. We do not know how exactly the word Carvaka was derived. It is perhaps a combination of caru (sweet) and vak (speech) and so meant the 'sweet-tongued', because he taught what all human beings generally want, viz. that pleasure is the ultimate aim of life. Perhaps the two names, Lokayata and Carvaka, were his titles, and Brhaspati his original name. The Aphorisms (sutras) he composed also go by the name of Brhaspati-sutras. But Brhaspati was the name also of the priest of gods. And so tradition tells that this priest of gods propounded a rankly materialistic philosophy in order to mislead the enemies of gods, namely, the demons. However, the Brhaspati Aphorisms and also a commentary on them seem to have been irrecoverably lost. We find references to them in works of the rival schools up to the fourteenth century. The literature of this school is very scanty. We find only one systematic work on it, Jayarasi's Tattvopaplavasimha (The Lion that Devours all Categories) of the seventh century AD, which shows that no category (tattva) can be proved to be real, that nothing can be real except what we see with our senses, and that therefore everything that man does is justified. Thus the philosophy of Carvaka was turned into a philosophy supporting any immoral policy and action. However, we have no evidence to show that Carvaka himself went so far.

 

As a reaction against the whole of the Mimamsa teaching and claim, the Carvaka philosophy attacked almost every doctrine of the Mimamsakas - their epistemology, metaphysics, and way of life. It constituted a strong check on the excesses of speculation and practice of the followers of the Mimamsa.

 

EPISTEMOLOGY

 

Of the three important sources of knowledge accepted in common by all the orthodox schools (perception, inference, and verbal testimony), the Carvakas accepted only perception as the valid source of knowledge and rejected both inference and verbal testimony. Whatever we know through perception is true and real.

 

The Carvakas at first seem not to have been aware of the difficulties in accepting perception as a valid source of knowledge, which were pointed out later by the Buddhist and Vedanta dialecticians. The later Carvakas showed that they knew of the difficulties, but they did not discuss the implications of this question and maintained on the whole a realistic position.

 

It is interesting to note that, in their examination of inference, the Carvakas anticipated the European sceptics. They said that inference was not a valid source of knowledge, because the major premise of an inference cannot be proved. For example:

 

Wherever there is smoke, there is fire (Major premise);

This mountain has smoke (Minor premise) ;

There is fire in the mountain (Conclusion}.

 

This is the classical example of inference in Indian epistemology. The Carvakas ask: (i) How can we formulate the major premise unless we have seen all the instances of smoke? If we have not seen all the instances, how can we logically be justified in using the word 'wherever'? If we have seen all the instances, we must have seen the present case, viz. the mountain also. (2) Then what is the use of making an inference when we have already perceived that there is fire in the mountains? So the Carvakas say that inference is either impossible or unnecessary. Inference cannot yield truth.

 

But are not causal statements like 'Fire causes the bodies to expand' true? And they are universal propositions like the major premise. The Carvakas say that these causal laws also cannot be true. If we are able to apply causal laws and find them to be true, it is only an accident. In fact, there are no causal laws. Every event is a chance Everything comes into existence and passes out of it according to its own nature. Even this nature is not a universal law; it too may change.

 

On verbal testimony the Carvakas make a strong attack. Verbal knowledge is only knowledge of words and their meanings based upon inference. My friend says: 'The orange is red.' Now, through the established meanings of the four words, I infer that the object before the mind of my friend is an orange and that it is red. But it has already been pointed out that inference is a risky source of knowledge. And how can I be sure of the reliability of my friend? For either reason, verbal testimony is not a reliable source of knowledge. But are not the Vedas reliable? Whereas the Mimamsakas were greatly concerned to defend the reliability and authoritativeness of the Vedas, the Carvakas make their strongest attack on them. The Vedas are not reliable at all, because they are self-contradictory. 'At one place they enjoin on us not to commit any injury; but at another place they ask us to sacrifice animals to gods.' How can one believe that the killing of animals in sacrifices brings one merit?

 

The Mimamsakas say that sound is eternal, that is, the words of the Vedas and their meanings are eternally existing. But how can we believe that the word-sounds are eternal? There is no sound, when no one utters it. And it stays only when produced by the vocal organs. If it is said that its eternity can be proved by inference, we have already shown that inference is not reliable. And perception does not show that the word-sound can be eternal.

 

We must admit that the Carvaka theory of knowledge is not exactly scepticism or agnosticism, but a fairly thoroughgoing positivism. They accept the reality of whatever we can perceive with our senses and deny the reality of whatever we cannot so perceive. We should note also that they did not deny the formal validity of inference, because they used the very laws of inference to show that we could not obtain material truths about the world through inference. They questioned only how we could obtain the major premise, but they did not say that, even if we had the major premise, inference was wrong. They did not criticize the structure of the syllogism,but only wanted to show that it was utterly useless for obtaining any new truth about the world. In fact, they used the law of contradiction in refuting the doctrines of their rivals.

 

 

METAPHYSICS

 

The Mimamsakas maintain that the atman is eternal and that it is not the same as the body. But the Carvakas say that there is no such thing as the atman. We do not and cannot perceive the atman, and we cannot prove its existence with the help of inference, because inference is not a valid source of knowledge. The Carvakas say that consciousness is not due to the atman. When a man dies consciousness disappears and we cannot prove that it goes away and exists somewhere else. Being conscious is a peculiar quality of the living human body. It

can retain the consciousness so long as the physical parts are healthy and stay together in a certain form. Consciousness therefore is an emergent quality of the physical parts coming together in certain proportion. For instance, when yeast is mixed with certain juices, they become wine. The property of being wine is a new quality which yeast and juices obtain when mixed. Life also is only a new configuration of matter. Nothing but matter is real.

 

Therefore the atman or self-awareness is only the physical body with a new emergent quality. But do we not say, 'I have a handsome body, a tall body' and so on? If the 'I' is not different from the body, how can it say: 'I have such and such a body'? To this the Carvakas answer by saying that the use of 'have' in these expressions is only conventional, created by the false notion that the 'I' is different from the body.

 

The Carvakas speak of mind (manas), which, acccording to the Mimamsa, is different from the atman. But the Carvakas seem to think of mind as the consciousness in its knowing function, which of course is not separate from the body. The body along with its consciousness is the atman and consciousness in its experiencing function is the mind. Mind knows the external world through the senses.

 

The world is the material world only. According to the Carvakas, it does not consist of five elements, as the Mimamsa believes. Earth, water, fire, air, and ether are the usual five elements corresponding to the qualities smell, taste, colour, touch, and sound, and also corresponding to the five sense organs, nose, tongue, eye, touch, and ear. The first four elements are perceivable, but not ether. So the Carvakas deny the reality of ether. It was thought that the cause of sound in the ear was the all-pervading ether. But the Carvakas say that sound is caused by air touching the ear. It is due to the movement of air not of ether. The other four elements constitute the world. They consist of tiny particles, which are not, however, the invisible atoms of the Naiyayikas. The particles accepted by the Carvakas are visible particles; they could not accept the reality of anything that could not be perceived with the senses.

 

There is no external cause for the four elements coming together and obtaining the qualities of life and consciousness. It is their nature to come together and to have those qualities. But we cannot generalize on this process and establish a law that, whenever these four elements come together in certain ratio, life and consciousness will emerge. The elements may change their nature any time. We cannot, therefore say that Nature contains some eternal laws. Every event is a chance, and if it develops into something, then it develops according to its own particular nature. One may conclude that, according to the Carvakas, the existence of everything is a chance, and that there are no laws of nature, but every object has its own nature.

 

 

WAY OF LIFE

 

The concept of dhartna, as we have seen, is the central concept of the Mimamsa philosophy. But the Carvakas denied its validity. Action when completed, the Carvakas would say, ends there. Apurva or the latent potential form, which action takes, or merit and demerit cannot be perceived at all by anyone. They are therefore not real. It is foolish to think that past actions become a kind of unseen force (adrsta) and determine our future births. In fact, there is no rebirth. We have only one birth and that is the present one. If there is rebirth, we ought to remember it. No one remembers his previous births.

 

Accepting only perception as the valid source of knowledge, the Carvakas rejected the reality of God. No one has ever seen God and no one can see him. The minor gods also do not exist. They and the Vedas belong to the imagination of crafty priests, who invented them to make a living out of them by officiating at sacrifices, and to awe people into obedience by saying that God would punish them, if they did not follow the Vedas. There is no heaven, no hell, no God, and there are no objective ethical laws. The only laws binding on man are the laws of the state, obedience to which brings rewards and disobedience of which brings punishment. And the science (sastra) of the laws of state is the only science worth studying.

 

What is meant by heaven is the pleasure we have in eating, drinking, singing and in the company and embrace of women. And hell is the pain we experience in this world itself. There is no point in trying to obtain salvation and a life of eternal quietude; there is an end to life at death and all will be quietude then. The differences between castes and their distinctive duties are falsely laid down by interested persons. There are no objective ethical laws, so one can do what one likes, provided he is careful that his actions do not bring pain as a consequence.

 

The religion of sacrifices is false and is propagated only by interested priests. The life of the monk belongs only to impotent persons. If the animal offered in sacrifice goes to heaven, why should not man offer his parents in sacrifice instead and send them to heaven? Really, the priests do not believe in what they preach. They tell us that the offerings made in this world on death anniversaries of the ancestors satisfy their hunger and thirst in the other world. If so, an extinguished flame in one lamp should burn, when oil is poured in another. To the people gone it is useless to make food offerings; one may as well offer food in his house to a person that has already left the house for another village. There is no soul that leaves the body after death and goes to the other world; otherwise, because of its attachment to its family and friends, it ought to come back to this very body. Life belongs only to this world and ends in this world. There is no other world. Man should try to make the best of this life, without believing in all that the Brahmanic religion teaches. The teachings of the Veda are those of fools, rogues, or demons. The priests tell us not to injure life, but because they are fond of flesh like the demons - nisacaras or night-wanderers, whom the Aryans found to be eating dirty, raw flesh and called them demons - they find an exception for themselves when eating the flesh of the animal burnt in sacrifice. These priests should not be trusted and man should do whatever is possible to enhance his pleasure and avoid pain. And any action done for the sake of pleasure is justified.

 

The Carvakas do not seem to have recommended pleasures of the moment, because pleasures of the moment and over-indulgance may result in pain and pain has to be avoided. It is also said that, because pleasure is associated with fine arts like music, they encouraged them and contributed much for their development. And because they were averse to killing animals, some of the Carvakas are believed to be vegetarians.

 

But the peculiar contribution which this philosophy seems to have made to the philosophy of life, was the philosophical justification it tried to supply to any kind of action for the sake of pleasure. Of course, pleasure is not possible without wealth (artha). By spending money we can obtain pleasure (kama). The value of dhartna (duty) and the value of salvation (moksa) were rejected by this school. But how can we obtain wealth for the pleasures we want? Does what we do for obtaining wealth have to follow any objective ethical laws?

 

Nothing is recognized by this school as a duty. A man can do anything - beg, borrow, steal or murder - in order to have more wealth and more pleasure. But the state laws prevent a man from doing whatever he likes and punishes him when he disobeys them. If he is clever enough to circumvent them, then his action is justified. Otherwise, he should follow them to avoid the pain of punishment. Kings, who have the power over the state's laws, themselves can do whatever they like and do anything for increasing their wealth, power, pleasure and dominion. Thus the Carvaka philosophy was later made to support what in Europe was called Machiavellian olicies of princes. Jayarasi calls his exposition of the Carvaka philosophy 'the supporter of the value, wealth.' Wealth (artha) is one of the four values of life recognized by Indian philosophers — wealth (artha), pleasure (kama), duty (dharma), and salvation (moksa).