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Concept
Charvaka
Summary
Charvaka (चार्वाक; IAST: Cārvāka), also known as Lokāyata, is an ancient school of Indian materialism. It is considered an example of atheistic schools in the Hindu tradition. Charvaka holds direct perception, empiricism, and conditional inference as proper sources of knowledge, embraces philosophical skepticism and rejects ritualism. It was a popular belief system in ancient India.
Brihaspati, a philosopher, is traditionally referred to as the founder of Charvaka or Lokāyata philosophy, although some scholars dispute this. During the Hindu reformation period in the first millennium BCE, when Buddhism was established by Gautama Buddha and Jainism was re-organized by Parshvanatha. Its teachings have been compiled from historic secondary literature such as those found in the shastras, sutras, and the Indian epic poetry.
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.
Charvaka is categorized as one of the nāstika or "heterodox" schools of Indian philosophy.
The etymology of Charvaka (Sanskrit: चार्वाक) is uncertain. Bhattacharya quotes the grammarian Hemacandra, to the effect that the word cārvāka is derived from the root carv, 'to chew' : "A Cārvāka chews the self (carvatyātmānaṃ cārvākaḥ). Hemacandra refers to his own grammatical work, Uṇādisūtra 37, which runs as follows: mavāka-śyāmāka-vārtāka-jyontāka-gūvāka-bhadrākādayaḥ. Each of these words ends with the āka suffix and is formed irregularly." This may also allude to the philosophy's hedonistic precepts of "eat, drink, and be merry".
Others believe it to mean "agreeable speech" or pejoratively, "sweet-tongued", from Sanskrit's "agreeable" and "speech" (which becomes in the nominative singular and in compounds). Yet another hypothesis is that it is eponymous, with the founder of the school being Charvaka, a disciple of Brihaspati.
According to claims of Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, the traditional name of Charvaka is Lokayata.
Official source
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