འཇིག་རྟེན་རྒྱང་པན་པ། | Glossary of Terms

Followers of a materialistic school of philosophy.

Also called the Cārvāka school, it was an ancient Indian school with a materialistic viewpoint accepting only the evidence of the senses and rejecting the existence of a creator deity or other lifetimes. Their teachings now survive only in quotations by opponents.

While this term is used as a name for the ancient materialist Skt. lokacārvāka school, it can also refer to non-Buddhist extremists in general.

While this term is used a name for the ancient Indian school of materialist philosophy, it can also refer to non-Buddhists in general.

An ancient school of Indian philosophy whose doctrine, outlined primarily in the Bārhaspatya Sūtras, is characterized by atheism and a strict form of materialism; also known as the Cārvāka.

A school of thought that rejected the Vedas and other religious texts and considered only empirical knowledge and inference to be valid. More commonly known in later literature as Cārvāka and in its Anglicized form Charvaka. It preexisted and was contemporary with the early centuries of Buddhism. Its literature no longer exists unless one takes the ninth-century text Tattvopaplava­siṃha by Jayarāśi Bhaṭṭa as associated with that school, which most scholars do not.

An ancient Indian philosophical system that is based on adherence to materialism and atheistic skepticism.

An ancient school of Indian philosophy whose doctrine, outlined primarily in the Bārhaspatya Sūtras, is characterized by atheism and a strict form of materialism.

An ancient Indian philosophical system that is based on adherence to materialism and atheistic skepticism.

While this term is used as a name for the ancient materialists, it can also refer to non-Buddhists in general.

While this term is used as a name for the ancient materialist school, it can also refer to non-Buddhist extremists in general.

While this term is used as a name for the ancient materialists, it can also refer to non-Buddhist extremists in general.

The materialist or “worldly” school, one of the many schools of the Indian śramaṇa movement around at the time of the Buddha. Today most of their literature and discourse has been lost, but their view can be compiled through secondary historical literature and the voices of their critics. According to this, they are claimed to have asserted a rigid materialist philosophy in which everything in the universe is composed of only four elements (earth, water, heat, and air). They rejected the moral causality associated with karma, and they rejected transmigration or rebirth. For more on the Lokāyata philosophy, see Chattopadhaya (1992), pp. 22–75.

Followers of the materialist philosophy expounded by Cārvāka.

A philosophical school founded by the legendary Bṛhaspati and headed by Ajita Keśakambalin at the time of the historical Buddha. The school taught that all phenomena in the universe are produced by the five main elements‍—earth, water, fire, wind, and space‍—and that all events occur randomly through the interaction of the elements’ properties. The highest goal in life can thus only be the maximization of sensual pleasure; since no human action can influence the course of nature, striving for virtuous behavior and better rebirth is denied as fruitless. See also Jamgön Kongtrül’s Light of the Sun, folios 3.a–3.b.