In Āryadevapāda’s Skhalitapramathanayuktihetusiddhi we find a problematic passage in which some Cārvāka theories are expounded. The problem here lies in the fact that, according to Āryadevapāda, the Cārvākas—who did not admit rebirth—would have upheld that happiness in this life can be gained by worshipping gods and defeating demons. As the Cārvākas were materialists, the reference to gods and demons does not fit so much with their philosophical perspective. In this paper, by taking into account several passages from Pāli and Sanskrit (...) Buddhist sources, I have tried to demonstrate that Āryadevapāda is here probably following the Laṅkāvatārasūtra, where mention is made of some Lokāyatikas who are said to have been able to infatuate gods and demons. In both the Pāli Canon and the Mahāyāna sātras, however, the term lokāyata does not refer to ‘‘materialism’’. It rather conveys the meaning of ‘‘art of disputation’’, and is generally used in the description of brāhmaṇas well versed in the Vedas, in the recitation of mantras and in dialectic methods in general. It is the Laṅkāvatārasūtra that introduces the idea—corroborated also by a passage from the Mahābhārata—that these brāhmaṇas, skilled in lokāyata, would have indulged in some materialistic tenet. When the two terms, Cārvāka and Lokāyata, came both to mean ‘‘materialism’’, around the IV century CE, it is highly probable that non-Cārvāka thinkers and commentators—as could be the case of Āryadevapāda—had in some occasion assimilated and integrated certain points of view, originally belonging to the ancient lokāyata perspective (for instance, the references to gods and demons), into what they believed Cārvāka philosophy had to be. (shrink)

in Āryadevapāda’s Skhalitapramathanayuktihetusiddhi we find a problematic passage in which some Cārvāka theories are expounded. The problem here lies in the fact that, according to Āryadevapāda, the Cārvākas – who did not admit rebirth – would have upheld that happiness in this life can be gaind by worshipping gods and defeating demons. As the Cārvākas were materialists, the reference to gods and demons does not fit so much with their philosophical perspective. In this paper, by taking into account several passages (...) from Pāli and Sanskrit Buddhist sources, I have tried to demonstrate that Āryadevapāda is here probably following the Laṅkāvatārasūtra, where mention is made of some Lokāyatikas who are said to have been able to infatuate gods and demons. In both the Pāli Canon and the Mahāyāna sūtras, however, the term lokāyata does not refer to “materialism”. It rather conveys the meaning of “art of disputation”, and is generally used in the description of brāhmaṇas well versed in the Vedas, in the recitation of mantras and in dialectic methods in general. It is the Laṅkāvatārasūtra that introduces the idea – corroborated also by a passage from the Mahābhārata – that these brāhmaṇas, skilled in lokāyata, would have indulged in some materialistic tenet. When the two terms, Cārvāka and Lokāyata, came both to mean “materialism”, around the IV century CE, it is highly probable that non-Cārvāka thinkers and commentators – as could be the case of Āryadevapāda – had in some occasion assimilated and integrated certain points of view, originally beloging to the ancient lokāyata perspective (for instance, the references to gods and demons), into what they be-lieved Cārvāka philosophy had to be. (shrink)

In this article an attempt is made to detect what could have been the dialectical reasons that impelled the Cārvāka thinker Udbhaṭabhaṭṭa to revise and reformulate the classical materialistic concept of cognition. If indeed according to ancient Cārvākas, cognition is an attribute entirely dependent on the physical body, for Udbhaṭabhaṭṭa cognition is an independent principle that, of course, needs the presence of a human body for manifesting itself. Therefore, he seems to describe cognition according to a double ontology: it is (...) both a principle and a characteristic, both independent and dependent. Two philosophical contexts – Vaiśeṣika and Nyāya – are here taken into account as possible anti-Cārvāka fault-finding points of view that spured Udbhaṭabhaṭṭa to reconsider the Cārvāka perspective. Although we do not have so much textual material on this particular aspect of the ancient and medieval philosophical debate in India, it nonetheless can be supposed that Udbhaṭabhaṭṭa’s reformulation of the concept of cognition was a tentative response to the Vaiśeṣika idea that cognition is not an attribute of the body, rather of the mind (which is here supposed to be eternal), and to the Naiyāyika perspective according to which cognition would be an attribute of an everlasting self. In the case of the Nyāya school, fortunately we have at our disposal the criticism put forward by Vātsyāyana against the materialistic conception of cognition during this time. By examining some Vātsyāyana’s objections, we will see that Udbhaṭabhaṭṭa’s idea of cognition really seems to have the aspect of a consistent answer to them, from a renewed materialistic point of view. (shrink)