Charvaka

Position

The Charvaka position rests on a restriction of epistemology. Only perception yields knowledge; inference is unreliable because it depends on a general relation that cannot itself be perceived; and scripture is the composition of men and carries no authority.

From this follows the rest. Consciousness is a property that arises from the combination of the material elements, as intoxicating power arises from the combination of ingredients in fermentation, and ceases when the body dissolves. There is no soul distinct from the body, no rebirth, no other world, no karmic consequence beyond death, and no liberation to be sought.

The recommended end is the ordinary good of this life. The tradition's opponents quote it as saying that while life remains one should live happily, since the body once burned does not return.

Ritual and priesthood

Charvaka texts, as quoted, are sharply satirical about sacrifice and priesthood: if an animal killed in a rite goes to heaven, why does the sacrificer not offer his own father; if offerings feed the ancestors, why bother carrying provisions on a journey. The tone is polemical and the arguments are directed at the Vedic ritual system and those who profit from it.

The problem of the sources

No Charvaka text survives complete. The Brihaspati Sutra, the school's foundational work, is lost; what exists are quotations and summaries in the works of Buddhist, Jain, Nyaya and Vedanta writers refuting the position, and one late work, Jayarashi's Tattvopaplavasimha, which is sceptical about all means of knowledge and whose relation to Charvaka is argued over.

This means the school is known through opponents who had every reason to state its position in the least defensible form. Ramkrishna Bhattacharya and Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya have both argued that the surviving picture is a caricature and that a more sophisticated materialism lies behind it.

Significance

Charvaka's existence matters for how Indian thought is characterised. That a thoroughgoing materialism was formulated, given a name, argued against seriously for centuries, and included in the standard lists of schools indicates a philosophical culture in which the fundamental questions were genuinely open rather than settled in advance by scripture.