Charvaka: The Ancient Indian Philosophy of Hedonism
Charvaka (also given as Carvaka) was a philosophical school of thought developed in ancient India circa 600 BCE, stressing materialism as the means by which one understands life and lives in the world. Materialism holds that perceivable matter is all that exists; concepts such as the soul and any other supernatural entities or planes of existence are simply inventions of imaginative people.
The meaning of the name is contested, with some claiming it references the act of chewing since Charvaka emphasized the importance of enjoying life through eating and drinking, while others maintain it is the name of the founder or that Charvaka was a disciple of the founder, a reformer named Brhaspati. The belief system is also known as Lokayata (“philosophy of the people”) and Brhaspatya after Brhaspati.
The Charvaka vision rejected all supernatural claims, all religious authority and scripture, the acceptance of inference and testimony in establishing truth, and any religious ritual or tradition. The essential tenets of the philosophy were:
Direct perception as the only means of establishing and accepting any truth
What cannot be perceived and understood by the senses does not exist
All that exists are the observable elements of air, earth, fire, and water
The ultimate good in life is pleasure; the only evil is pain
Pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain is the sole purpose of human existence
Religion is an invention of the strong and clever who prey on the weak
It should be noted, however, that while the above are accepted as the tenets of Charvaka, no original Charvakan texts have yet been found; all that is known of the belief system comes from later Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist works which were hostile toward the philosophy and recorded its beliefs in refuting them.
Charvaka is thought to have been developed by Brhaspati (not to be confused with the great sage of light Brhaspati of Dharma Shastra fame) in response to what he perceived as the superstitious nonsense people were fooled into accepting as irrefutable truth.
Brhaspati’s disciple, Charvaka, is thought by some to have developed his original vision. It is equally possible that Charvaka was its founder and Brhaspati the disciple, and it is also possible that neither is true. The Brhaspati Sutra, said to be the central text of Charvaka, was lost or destroyed, and any claims made regarding the philosophy should be viewed critically, including any made in this present article.
Although it seems to have exerted considerable influence in its time, especially in developing what would be known today as the scientific method, it never took root and died out by the 12th century.
The concepts expressed, however, not only contributed to the intellectual climate that allowed for the development of scientific thought in the region but also anticipate the atheism of Critias of Athens (circa 460-403 BCE), the hedonistic school of Aristippus of Cyrene (circa 435-356 BCE) and, most famously, the work of Epicurus (341-270 BCE) and his development of “enlightened hedonism” at his school in Athens.
These thinkers, and those who followed them, would influence the empiricist and utilitarian philosophies of the 19th century and the existential movement of the 20th century. Charvaka, therefore, was a belief system far ahead of its time even if it did not directly influence these later systems.
The Vedic Period & Charvaka
Charvaka was a response to the accepted religious vision of India at the time based on the Vedas. The Vedas are the principal religious texts which inform Hinduism (known to adherents as Sanatan Dharma, “Eternal Order” or “Eternal Path”). The word veda means “knowledge,” and the four Vedas – Rig Veda, Sama Veda, Yajur Veda, and Atharva Veda – are believed to relate the essential knowledge one needs to understand the Eternal Order of the universe and one’s place in the world.
These texts are considered Shruti (“what is heard”) by orthodox Hindus in that they are believed to have been “spoken” by the Universe through vibrations at some point in the distant past and “heard” by sages in meditative states sometime before circa 1500 BCE. These sages preserved the messages in oral form until they were written down during the Vedic Period (circa 1500 to circa 500 BCE) with other texts (including the Upanishads) which commented on and clarified them.
The vision of the Vedas gave rise to the religious/philosophical movement known as Brahmanism, which maintained that the world operated according to certain set rules, which were observable and demonstrable, and the existence of these rules, known as rita (“order”), argued for a rule-maker. This rule-maker was determined to be an incomprehensibly great being who had both created and was the Universe, and they called this Brahman.
Brahman could not be grasped by individual mortal minds, however, and so it was further determined that each human being carried a spark of this divine being within them known as the atman, and the purpose of life was to realize union of the atman with Brahman. One did so by performing one’s duty (dharma) in accordance with right action (karma) to achieve liberation (moksha) and freedom from the cycle of rebirth and death.
People could either embrace the pursuit of self-actualization and union (through which they would become better versions of themselves) or reject the divine truth and suffer accordingly in this life and each that would follow until they finally embraced the path of divine love and order.
The Vedas were chanted by the priestly class in Sanskrit, the language the works had been “heard” and composed in. The people who heard these chants did not understand Sanskrit and had to take the priests’ word for these texts being directly from God.
Religious and philosophical schools that accepted the Vedas as a spiritual authority were known as astika (“there exists”) and so also accepted the existence of the atman, Brahman, and the rest of the Vedic vision. Those who did not accept any of these were known as nastika (“there does not exist”). Nastika schools of thought included Jainism, Buddhism, and Charvaka.
Based on comments, criticisms, and remarks from later texts, Brhaspati thought it absurd that people would accept the word of the priests that these incomprehensible texts were the word of God and, more so, that they would consistently follow the rules, rituals, penances, and proscriptions the priests set down when it seemed clear this was all just a clever means by which the upper-class priests could live well at the expense of the lower class who had been tricked into accepting their fables as truths.
There is no way to actually know what motivated Brhaspati, nor even what his initial actions were in defiance of orthodox belief, but it seems that, at some point, he either preached a new vision or composed a text which expressed his belief that the purpose of life was to enjoy it to the greatest extent without fear of punishment in this life or any other because the life one was living clearly had no divine governor and one would not be granted another.
⇒ Charvaka: The Ancient Indian Philosophy of Hedonism
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