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THE SIX SYSTEMS
Udayana), who, though perhaps not the first to amalgamate the darśanas in exposition, must be reckoned the earliest of the authorities of the joint school.23
The “six systems," however, never attained the position of an exclusive, dogmatic orthodoxy. The Sarvadarśanasiddhāntasangraha ("Epitome of the Doctrines of All the Darśanas"), a tenth-or eleventh-century textbook from the school of Sankara, delineates, with adequate objectivity, the views of the Lokāyatikas (materialists),24 Jainas, Buddhists (Madhyamikas, Yogā. cāras, Sautrāntikas, and Vaibliāșikas), Vaiseșika, Nyāya, Pūrva
28 1b., pp. 29, 31, 37.
24 Lokayata, literally, "belonging to the world of sense," is the name given to a materialistic system said to have been founded by the sophist Carvāka (date, of course, unknown). "There are clear indications," states Garbe, "of the presence in India, as early as pre-Buddhistic times, of teachers of a pure materialism; and undoubtedly these theorics have had numerous adherents in India from that period onwards to the present day. ... The Lokāyata allow's only perception as a means of knowledge, and rejects inference. It recognizes as the sole reality the four clements, i.e., matter, and teaches that, when a body is formed by the combination of the elements, the spirit also comes into existence, just like the intoxicating quality with the mixture of special materials. With the destruction of the body the spirit returns again into nothingness. ... The postoperative force of merit and demerit, which, according to the belief of all the other Indian schools, determines the lot of each individual down to the smallest details, has no existence for the Lokayatika, because this conception is reached only by inference.... On the practical side this system exhibits itself as the crudest Eudaemonism; for it represents the gratification of the senses as the sole desirable good. . . . The Vedas are declared to be the idle prating of knaves, characterized by the three faults of untruthfulness, internal contradiction, and useless repetition. ... The ritual of the Brāhmans is a fraud, and the costly and laborious sacrifices are useful only for providing with a livelihood the cunning fellows who carry them out" (Garbe, "Lokāyata," in Hastings, op. cit., Vol. VIII, p. 188). None of the writings of this school are extant; all that we know of them has been gathered from the writings of their opponents. Cf. F. Max Müller, Six Systems of Indian Philosophy, London, 1899, pp. 86, 94ff.
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