Jābāli, one of the priest-cum-counsellors of king Daśaratha, has long been recognized as an odd character, preaching materialism in order to persuade Rāma to go back to Ayodhyā after the death of his father. The critical edition of the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa reveals several stanzas interpolated in the vulgate so as to denigrate Jābāli and brand him as a rank opportunist. In spite of that, whatever remains of Jābāli’s speech addressed to Rāma evinces one of the basic tenets of materialist ontology, (...) i.e., denial of the existence of any other-world, and hence the futility of performing rites for the ancestors. However, nothing is said about the epistemology,, ethics, and metaphysics of materialism as it existed at the time when the Rāmāyaṇa was redacted. Considering all this it is better to call Jābāli a proto-materialist who speaks of a philosophy akin to the teachings of Ajita Kesakambala, a senior contemporary of the Buddha, whose doctrine has been dubbed as that of annihilation in the Tipiṭaka. Both of them belong to the pre-Cārvāka materialist tradition in India. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to reconstruct the classical Sāṁkhya view on the relationship between a word and its meaning. The study embraces all the extant texts of classical Sāṁkhya, but it is based mainly on the Yuktidīpikā, since this commentary contains most of the fragments which are directly related to the topic of our research. The textual analysis has led me to the following conclusion. It is possible to reconstruct two different and conflicting views on the relationship between (...) a word and its meaning from the classical Sāṁkhya texts. The first view, the source of which is the Yuktidīpikā, is that all words are conventional in their origin. It resembles the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika theory of the primary linguistic convention and the conventional origin of all words. The second view, which is the implication of the Sāṁkhya idea of the authorless Vedas we can reconstruct on the basis of the majority of the classical Sāṁkhya commentaries, is that the relationship between a word and its meaning is natural. This view is probably influenced by Mīmāṁsā. Both of these views are hardly compatible with the Sāṁkhya teaching. It seems like classical Sāṁkhya, not having created its own detailed theory, oscillated between different conceptions. (shrink)

Classical Sāṃkhya has usually been interpreted as an intellectualist school. Its presumed method for the attainment of liberation is essentially characterized by rational inquiry into reality, which involves the intellectual understanding of the distinction between two principles: the conscious and the material. Some have argued that this liberating process is not only theoretical, but that it entails yogic practice, or that it is the natural outcome of existential forces that tend toward freedom. However, recent studies in Sāṃkhya involving detailed analysis (...) of an anonymous commentary of the Sāṃkhyakārikā, the Yuktidīpikā, suggest a more complex picture. The external functions of the five vital winds in relation to the sources of action and dispositions of being seem to play an important role in the liberating path. In this paper, I review the relation between bhāvas, karmayonis, and the five prāṇas by considering the social, moral, and interpersonal aspects of the five vital winds as described in the Yuktidīpikā. It will be shown how the external functions of prāṇa are related to the moral cultivation of vitality, leading to the enactment and manifestation of dispositions of being that bring about the realization of oneself as a knower in the ethical engagement with others. It is this unique way of understanding prāṇa in the Yuktidīpikā that makes the Sāṃkhya path for liberation something more than a theoretical cognitive method or a spontaneous and predetermined realization of one’s self. (shrink)

svabhāva (own being) and yadṛchhā (chance, accident) are named as two different claimants among others as the first cause (jagatkāraṇa) in the ŚvUp. But in later works, such as Aśvaghoṣa’s poems, svabhāva is synonymous with yadṛchhā and entails a passive attitude to life. Later still, svabhāva is said to be inhering in the Lokāyata materialist system, although in which sense—cosmic order or accident—is not always clearly mentioned. Svabhāva is also a part of the Sāṃkhya doctrine and is mentioned in the (...) medical compilations. It is proposed that the idea of svabhāva as cosmic order became a part of Lokāyata between the sixth and the eighth century ce and got widely accepted by the tenth century, so much so that in the fourteenth century Sāyaṇa-Mādhava aka Vidyāraṇya could categorically declare that the Cārvāka/Lokāyata upheld causality, not chance. But the other meaning of svabhāva, identical with yadṛchhā, continued to circulate along with kāla, time, which was originally another claimant for the title of the first cause and similarly had acquired several significations in course of time. Both significations of svabhāva continued to be employed by later writers, and came to be used in another domain, that of daiva (fate) vis-à-vis puruṣakāra (manliness or human endeavour). (shrink)

This essay proposes to review the problems of reconstructing and interpreting ancient texts, particularly philosophical commentaries, in the context of the Cārvāka/Lokāyata system of India. Following an overview of the Indian philosophical text tradition and the ontological and epistemological positions of the Cārvākas, three cases are discussed: (1) when there is no invariance in the text and the commentary, (2) when commentators differ among themselves in their interpretations, and (3) when contradictory interpretations are offered. The paper further discusses why certain (...) commentaries are to be treated as inconsistent with the base text and concludes that innovations inconsistent with the intention of the author should be treated differently from glosses that seek to explain the author’s original intentions. (shrink)

El artículo se centra en las relaciones entre la conciencia y la materia en la filosofía sa-mkhya, uno de los sistemas más antiguos de la tradición brahmánica. Tras una breve introducción a la cosmología sa-mkhya, se analizan la cosmogonía y el pluralismo metafísico de esta corriente de pensamiento, sirviéndose, como fuentes primarias, de los comentarios medievales sánscritos a la Sa-mkhyaka-rika- realizados por el escolástico medieval Va-caspati Mis´ra.

The paper gives an account of Rāmakaṇṭha’s (950–1000) contribution to the Buddhist–Brāhmaṇical debate about the existence or non-existence of a self, by demonstrating how he carves out middle ground between the two protagonists in that debate. First three points of divergence between the Brāhmaṇical (specifically Naiyāyika) and the Buddhist conceptions of subjectivity are identified. These take the form of Buddhist denials of, or re-explanations of (1) the self as the unitary essence of the individual, (2) the self as the substance (...) to which mental properties belong, (3) the self as the agent of both physical actions and cognitions. The difference of Rāmakaṇṭha’s position from both Nyāya and Buddhism is then elaborated. He posits a self, but not one that is an eternally unchanging substance, nor one that is anything other than consciousness. Hence his difference from Nyāya. He falls with Buddhism in holding that consciousness does not require anything other than itself to inhere in, but departs from Buddhism in holding that consciousness is not momentary but enduring. The guiding metaphor here is light, but light considered as a dynamic, qualitatively unchanging repetition of the action of illumination. (shrink)

The relationship between the two classical Sāṃkhya paradigms of the conditions and the intellectual creation has been a matter of debate since the early days of modern Indology. The precise role of each of these paradigms in the broader Sāṃkhya system, as well as the relationship between them, is unclear from the text of Īśvarakṛṣṇa’s Sāṃkhyakārikā, and most of the classical commentaries on this text offer little clarification. Of these commentaries, the anonymous Yuktidīpikā provides the most detailed and extensive information (...) on many philosophical issues, including the nature of the bhāvas and the pratyayasarga. This article aims to show that previous attempts by scholars to explain the relationship between these two paradigms have not taken the evidence of the Yuktidīpikā fully into account, and to reconstruct a more adequate understanding on the basis of this evidence. (shrink)

У статті визначено характеристики терміна «дг’яна» в «Йоґа-сутрах» Патанджалі. Досліджено згадки про дг’яну у тексті Патанджалі, показано, що поняття «дг’яна» в «Йоґа-сутрах» вперше отримує виражене філософське обґрунтування, в якому ключову роль відіграє когнітивна складова терміна. Незважаючи на давню історію дослідження «Йоґа-сутр», поняттю дг’яна та його властивостям було приділено мало уваги, що визначає актуальність дослідження. У статті розкрито зміст сутр Патанджалі, що пояснюють властивості дг’яни: ретельно проаналізовано місце дг’яни в досліджуваному тексті, її зв’язок з іншими поняттями, а також її ієрархічне положення. (...) Встановлено, що «Йоґа-сутри» включають у себе не тільки визначення дг’яни, але й описують її функцію по відношенню до свідомості – стійкість до неуважності, що визначає значення дг’яни як практики для збирання свідомості докупи. У результаті аналізу сутр вдалося виявити дві ключові властивості дг’яни щодо свідомості: «інтегруючу» та «трансцендуючу». Дг’яна призводить до стану зібраності свідомості, що є «інтегруючою властивістю» дг’яни як практики щодо протидії неуважності свідомості. Показано, що дг’яна, будучи інструментом подолання «розщеплення» свідомості, проявляє свою «трансцендуючу властивість», що сприяє ускладненню свідомості. Також у коментарі В’яси до «Йоґа-сутри» виділено перший приклад «соматизації дг’яни»: таким чином виявлено семантичний перехід від ментально-орієнтованого розуміння дг’яни до тілесноспрямованої, «соматичної» концепції, коли акцент уваги в йозі був зміщений від когнітивності до тілесності. (shrink)