A history of carvaka

[Guest guest]

The history of the coalescing of gan.a into maha_janapada has yet to

be fully told. Gan.a of the type who produced the Delhi iron pillar

or the iron-workings at Mahar, Raja Nal-ka Tila or Lohardewa ca.

1800 BCE. This history will certainly include the mleccha of

Mahavira's in Pan.n.avan.n.asutta -- mleccha, copper workers, who

will date back to the days of Sarasvati civilization. This history

will unfold the evolution of the history of dharma through dars'ana-

s.

 

Click on sarasvatisindhu

Click on files. Click on A History of the Carvakas.htm This

monograph is by Phil Hari Singh.

 

"The period that saw the emergence of Buddhism and Jainism, roughly

600 BCE onwards, also saw the rise of the Mahâjanapâdas,[80]

possibly alluded to in the Epic literature where we first see an

explicit mention of Cârvâka. His death at the hands of the orthodoxy

could be interpreted as the point at which Lokâyata lost the tribal

basis of its origins, but nevertheless retaining the mantras from

its early history.[81]"

 

[80] The absorption of the gan.as, the small tribal units, into the

larger "nation-state" ethos.

 

[81] D Chattopadhyaya, Lokâyata: A Study in Ancient Indian

Materialism, New Delhi, 1959, pp. 37-38

 

For links see: http://www.philo.demon.co.uk/Darshana.htm

 

Kalyanaraman

 

PS: I fondly recollect my association with the late Debiprasad

Chattopadhyaya who included my piece on Alchemy in his magnum opus:

A history of science and technology in ancient India. K.