Hi everyone,
This might interest some of you.
The Charavakas (Lokayata) philosophy of 600 BCE and earlier, was a materialistic & atheistic philosophy, probably one of the earliest ones in the world. It continued to have influence on Hindu, Jain and Buddhist philosophies till much later. It is even today considered as an important school of Indian philosophy.
Here is an article on it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charvaka*************
Charvaka (IAST: Cārvāka), originally known as Lokāyata and Bṛhaspatya, is the ancient school of Indian materialism. Charvaka holds direct perception, empiricism, and conditional inference as proper sources of knowledge, embraces philosophical skepticism and rejects Vedas, Vedic ritualism and supernaturalism.
One of the widely studied principles of Charvaka philosophy was its rejection of inference as a means to establish valid, universal knowledge, and metaphysical truths.[7][8] In other words, the Charvaka epistemology states that whenever one infers a truth from a set of observations or truths, one must acknowledge doubt; inferred knowledge is conditional.[9]
The Charvaka epistemology holds perception as the primary and proper source of knowledge, while inference is held as prone to being either right or wrong and therefore conditional or invalid.[9][45] Perceptions are of two types, for Charvaka, external and internal. External perception is described as that arising from the interaction of five senses and worldly objects, while internal perception is described by this school as that of inner sense, the mind.[9] Inference is described as deriving a new conclusion and truth from one or more observations and previous truths. To Charvakas, inference is useful but prone to error, as inferred truths can never be without doubt.[46] Inference is good and helpful, it is the validity of inference that is suspect – sometimes in certain cases and often in others. To the Charvakas there were no reliable means by which the efficacy of inference as a means of knowledge could be established.[7]
Since none of the means of knowing were found to be worthy to establish the invariable connection between middle term and predicate, Charvakas concluded that the inference could not be used to ascertain metaphysical truths. Thus, to Charvakas, the step which the mind takes from the knowledge of something to infer the knowledge of something else could be accounted for by its being based on a former perception or by its being in error. Cases where inference was justified by the result were seen only to be mere coincidences.[51]
Therefore, Charvakas denied metaphysical concepts like reincarnation, an extracorporeal soul, the efficacy of religious rites, other worlds (heaven and hell), fate and accumulation of merit or demerit through the performance of certain actions.[38] Charvakas also rejected the use of supernatural causes to describe natural phenomena. To them all natural phenomena was produced spontaneously from the inherent nature of things.[52]
The fire is hot, the water cold, refreshing cool the breeze of morn;
By whom came this variety ? from their own nature was it born.[52]
Charvaka school of Hinduism did not believe in karma, rebirth or an afterlife. To them, all attributes that represented a person, such a thinness, fatness etc., resided in the body. The Sarvasiddhanta Samgraha states the Charvaka position as follows,[53]
There is no other world other than this;
There is no heaven and no hell;
The realm of Shiva and like regions,
are invented by stupid imposters.
— Sarvasiddhanta Samgraha, Verse 8[53]
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Along with this form of early 'scientism', many other philosophical schools flourished that proposed many alternative metaphysical ideas. It has largely been left to the people to accept or reject whatever they wanted.
For information.
Cheers.
Sriram
