CArvAkas, LokAyatas, PaurandarasUtra

[Satya Upadhya]

>
>   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:

Hi Bergit, it was i who started this discussion about Indian materialism.
Thanks for your response.


>
>
>   - 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.

--> This is the first time i am hearing of this "four positions" that you
speak of. I obviously have to read up some more on this.

--> I may mention to you, however, that Jayarasi (whose book we now possess)
was most certainly not a Charvaka, as was convincingly demostrated by Walter
Ruben and others. He was a sceptic, and he rejected all pramanas. D.P.
Chattopadhyaya's "Lokayata/Charvaka" has two scholarly articles (one by
Ruben) which seek to disprove (quite convincingly i thought) the notion that
Jayarasi's book is a Charvaka text.

--> I have never heard of Udbhata before, but from what i know of the
Charvakas, it is almost certain that he was not a Charvaka as well.
Believing in an infinite number of pramanas goes contrary to all we know
about the Charvakas.

--> I may mention that there is a tendency among some scholars to identify a
certain Ajit Kesakamblin (who was probably a contempory of the Budha) with
the Charvakas. This, too, has been disputed by others who claim that Ajit
did not subscribe to the philosophy of "svabhav vad"--a critical component
of Charvaka thought.

-Satya
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