CArvAkas, LokAyatas, PaurandarasUtra

[Birgit Kellner]

  I forgot who it was who recently inquired about Indian materialism,
  but the subsequent discussion left me with the impression that a few
  bibliographic references might be in place:


  - Eli Franco & Karin Preisendanz. "Indian school of Materialism"
  Routledge Encyclopedia of philosophy. Ed. Edward Craig. London:
  Routledge, 1998. 178-181. [contains also a short biboliography on Indian
  materialism.]
  According to Franco/Preisendanz, Purandara claimed that CArVAkas
  also admit inferences, but only those which are known in everyday
  practice, not those which affirm or deny the existence of
  imperceptible entities like God/soul. In order to justify the
  acceptance of inference, Purandara is said to have emphasized its
  dependence on perception, which entails that acceptable inferences
  cannot transcend the domain of perception.
  Purandara's view is taken as one out of four alternative approaches
  taken by CArvAkas in response to the criticism of their epistemology
  that was exclusively based on perception. The other three are
  identified with JayarAzi's extreme scepticism which relinquishes
  even the validity of perception and purports that the CArvAkas
  indeed do not aim to establish anything at all, with UdbhaTa who
  claims that the number and characteristics of pramANas cannot be
  determined at all, and with some other authors (no name given) who
  continued the old line on "perception only" and added new arguments
  against the validity of inference. It goes without saying that these
  four positions need not have been the only ones.

  - Eli Franco: "PaurandarasUtra". M.A. Dakhy (ed.): Pt. Dalsukhbhai
  Malvania Felicitation Volume, Aspects of Jainology 3, Varanasi: P.V.
  Research Institute, 1991, vol.1: 154-63. [A new interpretation of
  fragments of this work, whose title is uncertain, on the basis of
  Jaina sources. Different from Solomon 1977-8)

  - Esther Solomon: "BhaTTa UdbhaTa". Annals of the Bhandarkar
  Oriental Research Institute 58-9 (1977-8), 985-992.


--
Best regards,

Birgit Kellner
Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies
Vienna University