The author of the Dabistân, who lived in the seventeenth century, also mentions the Cârvâkas in somewhat similar terms.[793]
Brahmanical authors often couple the Cârvâkas and Buddhists. This lumping together of offensively heretical sects may be merely theological animus, but still it is possible that there may be a connection between the Cârvâkas and the extreme forms of Mahayanist nihilism. Schrader[794] in analysing a singular work, called the Svasaṃvedyopanishad, says it is "inspired by the Mahayanist doctrine of vacuity (śûnya-vâda) and proclaims a most radical agnosticism by asserting in four chapters (a) that there is no reincarnation (existence being bubble-like), no God, no world: that all traditional literature (Śruti and Sṃriti) is the work of conceited fools; (b) that Time the destroyer and Nature the originator are the rulers of all existence and not good and bad deeds, and that there is neither hell nor heaven; (c) that people deluded by flowery speech cling to gods, sacred places, teachers, though there is in reality no difference at all between Vishṇu and a dog; (d) that though all words are untrue and all ideas mere illusions, yet liberation is possible by a thorough realization of Bhâvâdvaita." But for this rather sudden concession to Hindu sentiment, namely that deliverance is possible, this doctrine resembles the tenets attributed to the Cârvâkas.
FOOTNOTES:
[736] In the Sarva-darśana-saṅgraha, the best known compendium of Indian philosophy.
[737] J.C. Chatterji's definition of Indian philosophy (in his Indian Realism, p. 1) is interesting. "By Hindu philosophy I mean that branch of the ancient learning of the Hindus which demonstrates by reasoning propositions with regard to (a) what a man ought to do in order to gain true happiness ... or (b) what he ought to realize by direct experience in order to be radically and absolutely freed from suffering and to be absolutely independent, such propositions being already given and lines of reasoning in their support being established by duly qualified authorities."
[738] See Chatterji's work above cited.
[739] It is this idea which disposes educated Hindus to believe in the magical or sacramental power of mystic syllables and letters, though the use of such spells seems to Europeans incredible folly.
[740] See especially Garbe, Die Sâṅkhya Philosophie, 1894; and Keith, The Sâṅkhya System, 1919, which however reached me too late for me to make any use of it.
[741] E.g. in the Bhagavad-gîtâ and Śvetâśvatara Upanishads. According to tradition Kapila taught Asuri and he, Pañcaśikha, who made the system celebrated. Garbe thinks Pañcaśikha may be assigned to the first century A.D.
[742] This appears to be the real title of the Sûtras edited and translated by Ballantyne as "The Sâṅkhya Aphorisms of Kapila."