Who were the Cārvākas?

A great number of classical Sanskrit texts, most of them philosophical, refer to the Cārvākas or Lokāyatas (also Laukāyatikas, Lokāyatikas, Bārhaspatyas) who must have constituted a school of thought which has left us almost no literary documents. They once possessed a Sūtra text and several comment...

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Autores:
Bronkhorst, Johannes
Tipo de recurso:
Article of journal
Fecha de publicación:
2016
Institución:
Universidad de San Buenaventura
Repositorio:
Repositorio USB
Idioma:
spa
OAI Identifier:
oai:bibliotecadigital.usb.edu.co:10819/26103
Acceso en línea:
https://hdl.handle.net/10819/26103
https://doi.org/10.21500/22563202.2313
Palabra clave:
Rights
openAccess
License
http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_abf2
Description
Summary:A great number of classical Sanskrit texts, most of them philosophical, refer to the Cārvākas or Lokāyatas (also Laukāyatikas, Lokāyatikas, Bārhaspatyas) who must have constituted a school of thought which has left us almost no literary documents. They once possessed a Sūtra text and several commentaries thereon, for fragments have been preserved in the works of those who criticise them. In modern secondary literature the Cārvākas are usually referred to as “materialists”, which is somewhat unfortunate. It is true that the Sūtra text (sometime called Bārhaspatya Sūtra) accepts as only principles (tattva) the four elements earth, water, fire and air;yet the term “materialism” and its cognates evoke in the modern world associations which are not necessarily appropriate for this ancient school of thought