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| [Introduction] [ Carvaka ] [Mimamsa] [Nyaya] [Vaisesika] [Sankhya] [Yoga] [Vedanta] |
| 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).
Source: Philosophical Traditions of India, P. T. Raju |
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Swaveda - Background - Indian Philosophical Systems - Carvaka
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