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Book Review

Pradeep P. Gokhale. Lokāyata/Cārvāka: A Philosophical Inquiry. Oxford

University Press, New Delhi, 2015. Pages XIV+222 (including Bibliography and
Index). Rs. 750.

Professor Pradeep P. Gokhale is well-known to the students of philosophy for his valuable
works on Buddhism, Jainism and logic. His recent book, Lokāyata/Cārvāka: A Philosophical
Inquiry (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2015) is an original contribution to the study
of free thinking in India. It should be welcome to all who, despite the wide-spread and
prolonged campaign that India is a land of spiritualism and nothing else, do not think that
the whole of the philosophical tradition in India is fundamentally fideistic and oriented
towards the attainment of freedom (mukti). Gokhale offers an analytical survey of the
meagre but significant literature on the Lokāyata/Cārvāka and highlights the non-
conformist and critical aspects that are seldom, if at all, held up before the reading public,
or in the college text books. His earlier work, Tattvacintaka Carvaka (Manovikash
Prakashan, Pune, 2013) is also worth reading by those who can read Marathi.

The first feature of the work that may surprise some readers is that it is not merely
an academic exercise. Gokhale writes as one who is committed to free thinking: ‘. . . I was
fascinated by Cārvāka-darśana due to its critical and down-to-earth approach. My heretic
temperament was boosted by the reading of Cārvāka-darśana from [the Sarva-darśana-
saṅgraha] and from a short but exhaustive discussion in Marathi written by Sadashiv
Athavale on the history and philosophy of Cārvākas’ (p.viii). Gokhale’s personal
philosophical affiliation remained Lokāyata/Cārvāka for many years. ‘The addition that took
place in the course /119/ of time was because of Vipassana meditation and the interest
developed in Ambedkar studies due to which I started calling myself a secular Buddhist and
also an Ambedkarite Buddhist.’ Gokhale assures his readers that ‘this did not amount to a
deviation from Cārvāka affiliation, rather an extension of it.’ It will be interesting to learn
his current views on Lokāyata/Cārvāka, because his approach is in several respects quite
unique. Moreover, it concerns the philosophical belief in both Lokāyata/Cārvāka and
Buddhism as he views it.

Following Athvale, Gokhale proposes to take a pluralist approach to the issue, as

opposed to the approach followed by Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya and others, who consider
it to be a materialist philosophy only. Athvale looked at Cārvāka mainly as a representative
of ‘freedom of thought and expression’ and materialism was just one of its offshoots, where
the possibility of scepticism as another offshoot was not ruled out (p. viii). For Gokhale,
too, the Lokāyata/Cārvāka perspective is largely a rebellion against the otherworldly and
ritualistic tendency in Indian religious tradition. It was quite natural that their perspective
could have assumed various philosophical forms, materialism being only one of them. In
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order to do justice to the philosophical spirit which lies in a tendency to enquire and
examine all types of dogmas and religious beliefs, Gokhale considers the Lokāyata/Cārvāka
to have opened up several philosophical avenues, not materialism alone.

Secondly, instead of following the historical approach, Gokhale prefers to

concentrate on a doctrinal-philosophical study of Lokāyata/Cārvāka, which, he believes, is
still in an immature stage. Lokāyata scholars with materialist bias, Gokhale complains, are
insensitive not only to Jayaraśi Bhaṭṭa, a sceptic, but also to the diversity within materialist
epistemology. His focus in this book is solely on the doctrinal aspects, arguments and
issues, not on the historical study of the origin and development of the doctrines. However,
he does not neglect history altogether. He provides a broad historical framework which
forms the backdrop of his study. He starts off from the sixth century and stops at the tenth,
when further systematization and diversification of Lokāyata/Cārvāka seem to have come
to a halt.

The book is divided into seven chapters, each devoted to a single theme. In the first
chapter he discusses unity and diversity in the Lokāyata/Cārvāka perspective. The second
deals with scepticism in /120/ Cārvāka-darśana; the third and the fourth speak of two
varieties of empiricism, extreme and mitigated. The fifth takes up some aspects of
materialism; the sixth is devoted to the Cārvāka on values (that is, ethics). The seventh
and the last chapter reviews Indian philosophy from the Cārvāka perspective. The book
also contains detailed glossaries (Sanskrit-English and English-Sanskrit), a bibliography and
an index.

It is not possible to take up all the issues raised by Gokhale in a review article like
this. I would therefore confine myself to a few observations.

***

What Gokhale has claimed concerning the nature of the Lokāyata/Cārvāka is not new. At
the end of the nineteenth century T.W. Rhys Davids (Dialogues of the Buddha, Vol 1, 1899,
pp.14, 110, 139, 166) denied the very existence of any philosophical system called
Lokāyata. C. Bendall pointed out in Athenæum, June 30, 1900 that he was wrong. Even
then Louis de la Vallée Poussin, who mentioned this in his article ‘Materialism (Indian)’ in
the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (Vol.8 1915, p.493 n4) said:

We are not convinced that a materialistic “school,” a “system,” in the exact sense of
the word, existed. There has been “materialists” who have entertained some very
well-defined theories, to whom the “spiritualists” whether Brāhmans, Buddhists, or
Jains, give different names, and whose opinions are perhaps artificially, grouped in
the works of which we have spoken. (ERE, 8: 493)

However, such claims are not supported by available evidence. Leaving aside the
proto-materialist ideas found in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad (which for the first time bears witness
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to the existence of sceptics, as in 1.2. 20, who were not ready to believe in any world
beyond the world of the living), Ajita Kesakambala’s flat denial of the efficacy of all rituals
and donations (presumably to the Brahmanas) in Long Discourses, Pāyāsi (Paesi)’s refusal
to believe in the immortality of the soul found in both Buddhist and Jain works, or Jābāli
the sage’s declaration that there was no merit in performing post-mortem rites and offering
food etc. to the dead ancestors in the Rāmāyana, there is a very clear statement of the
existence of six philosophical systems in the Tamil epic, Maṇimēkalai (composed between
the fourth and the sixth/seventh century). They are as follows: Lokāyata, Buddhist,
Sāṃkhya, Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika and Mimāṃsā (27.79-80). The names of the ācāryas (masters,
/121/founders) are also given: Bṛhaspati, Jina (Buddha), Kapila, Akṣapāda, Kaṇāda and
Jaimini (27.81-82). They are specifically called six systems of logic. This list may very well
be taken as the first instance of the six original logical systems, later called ṣaṭ-tarkī or
ṣaṇmata. All epitomes and digests of darśanas written at various times treat
Lokāyata/Cārvāka on a par with other systems. The custom was current right from the
eighth century (when Haribhadra composed his Epitome of the six (actually seven)
darśanas and Śāntarakṣita, his polemical work, A Collection of Principles (Tattvasaṅgraha)
down to the fourteenth century (when the digest of all darśanas by Sāyaṇa-Mādhava was
compiled). Without flying in the face of all this, it cannot be said that Lokāyata/Cārvāka was
not a philosophical system, but a conglomeration of all anti-religious, anti-ritualistic and
anti-otherworldly views.

Thirdly, it is no longer a matter of conjecture but an established fact that like various
other idealist systems, materialism too had a base text and several commentaries thereon
written at different times and places with both common and diverse points of view of the
commentators. We have extracts of several such commentaries that bear witness to a
single philosophical system which had its own development, mainly on the basis of
interaction with other systems, such as Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika. To deny the status of a
philosophical system – and a materialist system at that – to Lokāyata/Cārvāka does not
hold water.

The proof of the Lokāyata/Cārvāka being a philosophical school is attested by

epigraphic evidence as well. The earliest known such inscription has been found at Ranode
(Narod) in Gwalior (first printed in The Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal 16.1080-82,
reproduced in Epigraphia Indica, Vol.I, pp.358). Vyomaśiva, a Vaiśeṣika philosopher, is
praised as a master of all philosophical systems. He was Kapila himself in Sāṃkhya,
Sadguru (that is, Bṛhaspati) in Lokāyata, Buddha in the doctrine of Buddha, and Jina in the
words of Jina, etc. There are also a few inscriptions in the Epigraphia Carnatica that had
been collected and discussed at length by B.A. Saletore (Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental
Research Institute, Vol. 23, 1942, pp.386-397); G H. Khare and R. Kulkarni have
reproduced the conclusions in their article in Cārvāka Samīkṣā (in Marathi, ed. Ganesh
Thite, Vishvakarma Sahityalaya, Pune, 1978, pp.104-107). It is just not possible to
disregard all the sources that mention Lokāyata as a darśana, on a par with Sāṃkhya,
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Yoga, Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Mimāṃsā and Vedānta, on the one hand, and the Buddhist and the
/122/Jain systems of philosophies on the other.

This is not to deny that in addition to the Lokāyata/Cārvāka there were other
materialist schools in India as well. The Maṇimēkalai itself speaks of the existence of at
least two materialist schools, namely, Bhūtavāda and Lokāyata (27.264-276). The Sūtra-
kṛtāṅga-sūtra, a Jain canonical text, mentions several proto-materialist doctrines differing
on their views on the number of elements (1.1.6-17). Later Jain authors and lexicographers
mention materialism as a definite philosophical system and like their Buddhist counterparts
call it by no fewer than four different names: Cārvāka, Lokāyata, Bārhaspatya and Nāstika
(see Hemacandra’s Abhidhāna-cintāmaṇi, 3.526-27). Along with Jain, Buddhist, Nyāya,
Sāṃkhya and Vaiśeṣika, Lokāyata is also called a tārkika system, reminiscent of ṣaṭ-tarkī,
(mentioned above). Buddhist polemicists such as Śāntarakṣita devoted a separate chapter
(ch.22) for the examination (as well as refutation) of Lokāyata. He and his commentator
Kamalaśīla too employ all the four names to designate materialism. The latter also speaks
of several commentators on the book of aphorisms (seeTattvasaṅgraha-Pañjikā (TSP ) on
Tattvasaṅgraha, verse 1864).

There is more evidence to demonstrate that the Lokāyata/Cārvāka had all along
been accepted as a philosophical system, not just as the views of a loosely related
community of free-thinkers having similar but not identical ideas. Moreover, the available
fragments, regrettably small in number though they are, clearly indicate the existence of
one base text. Fortunately the names of some of the commentators on this work have
come down to us: Kambalāśvatara, Bhāvivikta, Aviddhakarṇa, Udbhaṭa Bhaṭṭa, and, last but
not least, Purandara, who is credited both with compiling the book of aphorisms and
composing a commentary thereon (for details, see R. Bhattacharya, Studies on the Cārvāka
/Lokāyata, Anthem Press, London and New Delhi, 2011, pp.65-68).

One of the hazards of not following the chronological approach is found in Gokhale’s
division of empiricism into two groups, extreme and mitigated. They might be interpreted
as two schools of materialism, the first appearing earlier and the second, later. Even after
the appearance of the latter, Hemacandra (twelfth century) is found to dismiss Lokāyata
quite derisively on the ground that the Lokāyatika did not admit inference as an instrument
of cognition (Anya-yoga-vyaveccheda-dvātriṃśikā, verse 20). At least four centuries before
this Purandara had stated quite categorically that the Cārvākas /123/ too admitted of such
an inference as was well-known in the world, but that which was called inference [by
some], transgressing the worldly way, was prohibited by them (qtd by Kamalaśīla on
Tattvasaṅgraha, verses 1481-82). In another source we find the Cārvākas declaring:
‘Indeed, who will deny the validity of inference when one infers fire from smoke, and so
on; for even ordinary people ascertain the probandum by such inferences, though they may
not be pestered by the logicians. However, inferences that seek to prove a self, God, an
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omniscient being, the after-world, and so on are not considered valid by those who know
the real nature of things’ (Jayantabhatta, Nyāyamañjarī, chapter 2, ed. G. Shastri, Varanasi,
1982 vol.1 p.184). Hemacandra, like Vācaspati Miśra before him, appears to be totally
unfamiliar with Purandara’s view. It will be uncharitable to say that he did not know of
Purandara and other such materialists. And yet when he sets out to denigrate materialism,
he refers to the views of the pre-Cārvākas only.

***

To take another example: Gokhale accepts Franco’s view that Jayarāśi, author of the
Tattvopaplavasiṃha, is a Cārvāka with a difference. Instead of being a materialist, he was
a sceptic. By this assumption the domain of the Lokāyata/Cārvāka is extended to include
immaterialists as well. That Jayarāśi was an immaterialist is testified by his arrogant claim
at the end of his work: ‘even those doubts or critical question which could not become the
object of knowledge even Bṛhaspati, the preceptor of the Gods, have been raised by the
teachers viz. Shri Jayarāśi Bhaṭṭa, for the sake of removing the pride of the fools’
(pākhaṇdadarpacchidi). Trans. V.N. Jha, Chinmaya International Foundation Shodha
Sansthan, Ernaculam, 2013, p.464). As Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya had shown many years
ago, ‘whatever might have been the exact meaning of pāṣandin, it could by no stretch of
imagination have excluded the Lokāyatas or Cārvākas’ (Indian Philosophy, People’s
Publishing House, Delhi, 1964, p.223 n4). Jayarāśi apparently did not consider himself to be
a heretic, otherwise why should he claim to be an antagonist of the pākhandas?

The debate is an old one. While Sukhlalji Sanghvi, Rasiklal Parikh, Eli Franco and
some others continue to claim that Jayarāśi was a Cārvāka (though not a materialist, but a
sceptic), Walter Ruben, K.K. Dixit, D. Chattopadhyaya, M.K. Gangopadhyaya and others
/124/ persistently contested this view. Since there has been no addition to our knowledge
concerning Jayarāśi than what was known in 1940, the year Jayarāśi’s book was first
published, it is futile to expect unanimity in this regard. Wild conjectures, however, have
been proposed relating to Jayarāśi having been a lapsed Cārvāka, etc. All this has gone well
with Gokhale. He has been encouraged to suggest that ‘the titles such as Lokāyata-
darśana, Cārvāka-darśana, and Bārhaspatya-darshana could not be treated as the name of
a uniform single system, but of a family of systems or a family of philosophical trends
(p.19).

Let us examine this claim. Is there any evidence that a group of philosophers used
to call themselves Lokāyatika or Cārvāka? Yes. The Maṇimēkalai speaks of the former, but
not of the latter. It, however, mentions another materialist school, the doctrine of which is
called bhūtavāda. It is then permissible to assume that the Lokāyatikas and the
bhūtavādins formed two distinct groups. Both contemporaneous and holding materialist
views, but at the same time differing from each other in some points of detail.

As to the Cārvākas, we hear of them mostly mentioned in the plural number

(cārvākāḥ, the Cārvākas), as in Kamalaśīla’s TSP, on TS verse 1456. Here, too, we read of a
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clearly materialist view, refusing to admit God, Heaven and Hell, the omniscient person,
etc. All this signifies several systems with an ontology shared by all, but differing in some
other respect/respects (for example, epistemology). The chronology of the appearance of
various names of the materialist schools indicates diversity in unity. But, by no means,
they suggest a family of philosophers having diverse philosophical trends.

The inclusion of Jayarāśi in the fold of the Lokāyata/Cārvākas is unjustified. It has

been pointed out time and again that his doctrine of tattvopaplavavāda is nowhere treated
as a view related to the Lokāyata/Cārvāka, excepting in Śaṅkara Miśra’s commentary on
Śrīharṣa’s Khaṇḍana-khaṇḍa-khādya. There too Śaṅkara Miśra is not sure whether Śrīharṣa
meant ‘a section of the Cārvākas’ or the Cārvākas themselves. Jain savants controvert
Lokāyata/Cārvāka and tattvopaplavavāda as two distinct views. They take each as a
separate school, not at all allied to the other. Gokhale has not offered any new argument or
evidence in favour of taking tattvopalavavāda as affiliated or even distantly related to the
Cārvākas. /125/

***

To conclude, Gokhale has successfully highlighted the anti-Establishment character of the

Lokāyata/Cārvāka, but, at the same time, gone back to the obsolete notion that it was not
a systematic philosophy. This, however, does not detract anything from the merit of the
work, enlivened by sound scholarship and methodical presentation. Even when a reader will
differ from his view on Jayarāśi, he/she cannot but appreciate the sincerity of his intention.
The publishers too are to be congratulated for bringing out a well-made book, almost error
free and well-designed.

Pavlov Institute, Kolkata. Ramkrishna Bhattacharya /126/

Jadavpur Journal of Philosophy, 26:1,

2016-17 pp.119-126. Corrected copy.