Charvaka: Materialist Voice of Ancient India

For Charvaka, the universe was composed of matter; consciousness was but a product of the body, like fragrance arising from a flower

• He rejected the authority of sacred texts, scoffed at rituals, and accused priests of inventing heaven and hell to maintain power over the people.
• Charvaka reached people not through temples or scriptures, but through reasoned dialogue and public debate

By Ramesh Raja

In the grand gallery of Indian philosophy, where sages speak of souls, heavens, karmic cycles, and cosmic orders, there exists a figure who stands apart; almost scandalously silent in official histories, yet profoundly loud in the corridors of reason. His name is Charvaka, or as tradition also calls him, Lokāyata; the philosophy of this world.

While India’s philosophical heritage is often celebrated for its metaphysics and mysticism, Charvaka reminds us that skepticism, materialism, and rational rebellion are also indigenous to this soil. Long before Europe’s Enlightenment, an Indian voice dared to say: “Believe only what you can see, touch, and experience.”

A Philosophy of the Earth

The word Charvaka has been variously interpreted, but it is often associated with the idea of a sharp, discerning intellect, while Lokāyata literally means “worldly”, a philosophy rooted in this world, not in imagined heavens.

Emerging around the sixth century BCE, in the fertile intellectual plains of Magadha, Charvaka arose alongside Buddhism and Jainism. This was an age of questioning, when ancient certainties trembled before new inquiries. Yet, among all dissenters, Charvaka was the most radical. Where Buddha spoke of rebirth and Mahavira of karmic bondage, Charvaka laughed at the idea of another world beyond this one.

For Charvaka, the universe was composed of matter; consciousness was but a product of the body, like fragrance arising from a flower. When the body perishes, consciousness dissolves. There is no soul waiting in line for another birth, no ledger of cosmic rewards and punishments.

The Courage to Doubt

Charvaka’s audacity lay not only in what he denied, but in how he denied it. He rejected the authority of sacred texts, scoffed at rituals, and accused priests of inventing heaven and hell to maintain power over the people. Knowledge, he insisted, comes only from direct perception; what the eyes see, the hands touch, the senses experience.

In a civilization deeply invested in transcendence, this was a philosophical earthquake.

Critics accused Charvaka of hedonism, quoting a famous verse urging people to live joyfully while life lasts, for once the body is reduced to ashes, it never returns. But this was not an invitation to vulgar excess; it was a declaration of intellectual honesty. If this life is all we have, then dignity, joy, and justice must be pursued here—not postponed to an imagined afterlife.

Founder of Charvaka

There is no historically verifiable individual founder of Charvaka. Traditional sources mention names such as:

• Brihaspati (often cast as the earliest teacher of materialism)
• Charvaka (eponymous figure)
• Purandara (later commentator)
• Purandara (Mentioned in later texts)
• Jayarashi Bhatta (8th–9th century CE), A later skeptic whose work Tattvopaplavasimha reflects Charvaka-like radical skepticism.

However, no authentic writings or biographical records survive for these figures. Most modern scholars treat Charvaka as a collective intellectual tradition, not the creation of a single historical person.

Way of Teaching

Charvaka reached people not through temples or scriptures, but through reasoned dialogue and public debate. Its thinkers engaged society in courts, learning circles, and marketplaces, questioning ritual, priesthood, and beliefs in karma and the afterlife. With no clergy, idols, or sacred spaces, Charvaka relied on lived experience, logic, and often satire to provoke thought. Truth, for them, resided not in temples but in the human capacity to observe, question, and think freely.

A Voice That Was Silenced

Unlike other Indian schools, Charvaka left no surviving scriptures. His works were lost, destroyed, or ignored. What we know of him comes from his opponents—Brahmanical, Buddhist, and Jain scholars who often caricatured his views. The absence of his own voice is itself a historical commentary: radical skepticism is rarely preserved by orthodox institutions.

Charvaka never built temples, monasteries, or lineages. He had no priesthood, no sacred geography, no organized disciples. His was a philosophy of solitary thinkers, court skeptics, and urban intellectuals who dared to question the sacred canopy of their age.

Echoes Across the Ages

Though Charvaka vanished as an organized school, his spirit never died. In modern times, his ideas resonate with secular humanism, scientific rationalism, and even Marxist materialism. Like Marx, Charvaka saw religion as a social instrument; like modern science, he insisted on evidence over faith. Yet, unlike Marxism’s collective revolutionary program, Charvaka remained a philosopher of individual experience and worldly existence.

In today’s India—where debates over faith, reason, and identity shape public life—Charvaka stands as a forgotten ancestor of dissent. He reminds us that questioning tradition is not a Western import; it is part of our own intellectual DNA.

Evidence in Sindh or Indus Valley Civilization

There is no direct evidence that Charvaka philosophy existed during the Indus Valley Civilization (3300–1300 BCE). That civilization predates the philosophical systems of ancient India by over a millennium.

Similarly, there is no archaeological or textual evidence linking Charvaka specifically to the ancient history of Sindh. However, Sindh later became an important center of other philosophical and spiritual traditions (including Buddhism and Sufism), which engaged with materialist ideas in various ways.

In the 1990s, Rasool Bux Palijo in his talk on Hinduism, Budhism and Jainism in Hyderabad; spoke about Charvaka as a forgotten voice of resistance. He said that in ancient times, when religious leaders went to preach, the Charvakas followed them; not with prayers but with questions. They taught people to live naturally, to care for the body and mind, and to focus on this life rather than promises of the next. Their ideas were materialist and based on reason, not fear. Because, this challenged Brahmanical power, Charvaka philosophy was not debated but destroyed. Their books were erased. But, yet Charvaka survives in memory, proving that ideas of freedom and reason cannot be fully wiped out.

Charvaka Alive in Today

No one today calls themselves a Charvaka. There are no temples, no congregations, no census category for Lokāyata followers. Yet millions unknowingly share his worldview—atheists, rationalists, scientists, skeptics, and ordinary citizens who believe that truth must be tested, not inherited. Charvaka is not followed by people; he is followed by ideas.

Books to Understand the Philosophy

Almost no original Charvaka texts survive; knowledge comes mainly from quotations and critiques by Brahmanical, Buddhist, and Jain scholars. Key historical references include the Bṛhaspati Sūtra and Sarva-Darśana-Saṅgraha.

Today, to understand Charvaka, several modern books are useful: Lokāyata / Cārvāka: A Philosophical Inquiry (Pradeep P. Gokhale), Lokayata: A Study in Ancient Indian Materialism (Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya), Ancient and Modern Empiricism: Charvaka and Logical Positivism (Dr. Kiran Jaydeo Save), Charvaka Darsanam (Dr. Dharmaraj Adat), Carvaka Philosophy (Shastri/Heera/Bhattacharjee), and Uniqueness of Carvaka Philosophy in Indian Traditional Thought(Bhupender Heera). These works provide a clear understanding of Charvaka’s materialist and rational worldview.

A Whisper from Antiquity

In a civilization that often celebrates transcendence, Charvaka dared to celebrate the tangible. In a culture that often postponed justice to the next life, he insisted on justice in this one. In an age of unquestioned authority, he made doubt a virtue.

Perhaps that is why history tried to forget him.

Yet, as long as a child asks “Why?”, as long as a thinker demands evidence, as long as a citizen challenges sacred power, Charvaka’s ancient whisper continues:

“Do not bow to illusion. This world is enough.”

Read: Diplomacy vs. Biodiversity: The Houbara Bustard’s Dilemma

____________________

The author of this article, Engr. Ramesh Raja, is a Civil Engineer, visionary planner, PMP certified and literary enthusiast with a passion for art and recreation. He can be reached at engineer.raja@gmail.com