The materialist school, also named Lokayata: perception is the only sure means of knowledge, the four elements are all there is, and consciousness ends with the body.
The materialist school, also named Lokayata; the two names record one tradition, not two. No Carvaka text survives in its own voice, and the position is known through its opponents' summaries, above all the doxographies of its rivals; that evidence limit is part of the record. The school held that perception is the only reliable means of knowledge, that inference cannot reach beyond what is seen, and that the teachers Ajita Kesakambali and the other materialist voices of the age were reporting the same denial of an afterlife, of sacrifice, and of any fruit of good or evil deeds.
Sources
Primary
- No Carvaka text survives; the position is reported in Madhava's Sarva-darshana-sangraha and in Jain and Buddhist summaries.
Secondary
- Ramkrishna Bhattacharya, Studies on the Carvaka/Lokayata.
How this compares to Christianity
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