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RELIGIOUS SECTS
The next classes of sectaries, confuted by SANKARA, were various infidel sects, some of whom avowedly, and perhaps all covertly, are still in being: the list is also interesting, as discriminating opinions which, in the ignorance subsequent to their disappearance from Hindustan, have very commonly been, and, indeed, still are frequently confounded. These are the Chárvákas, or Súnya Vádís, the Saugatas, the Kshapanakas, the Jainas, and the Bauddhas.
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The Chárvakas were so named from one of their teachers, the MUNI CHÁRVÁKA. From VŔIHASPATI – some of whose dogmas have been quoted from the work of MADHAVA, they are termed also Várhaspatyas. The appellation Súnya Vádí implies the asserter of the unreality and emptiness of the universe, and another designation, Lokayata, expresses their adoption of the tenet, that this being is the Be-all of existence: they were, in short, the advocates of materialism and atheism, and have existed from a very remote period, and still exist, as we shall hereafter see.
The Saugatas are identified even by MADHAVA with Bauddhas, but there seems to have been some, although probably not any very essential difference: the chief tenet of this class, according to ÁNANDA GIRI, was their adopting the doctrine taught by SUGATA MUNI, that tenderness towards animated nature comprehends all moral and devotional duty, a tenet which is, in a great measure, common to both the Bauddha and Jaina schisms: it is to be feared, that the personal description of the Saugata, as a man of a fat body and small head,
