Read Book Online : http://www.archive.org/stream/sarvadarsanasamg035018mbp#page/n23/mode/2up

Download pdf Book : http://ia600204.us.archive.org/11/items/sarvadarsanasamg035018mbp/sarvadarsanasamg035018mbp.pdf

Carvaka’s philosophy developed at a time when religious dogma concerning our knowledge of reality, the constitution of the world, and the concept of an afterlife were being increasingly questioned, both in India and elsewhere. Specifically, the school of Carvaka contained within itself a materialism that ruled out the supernatural (lokayata), naturalism (all phenomena described in terms of the properties of the four elements), rejection of the Vedas (nastika), and a skepticism that included rejection of inferential logic, or induction. One of the best sources for Carvaka’s atheistic argument happens to be a book, Sarvadarshansamgraha (the collection of all philosophies), written in the Fourteenth Century by Madhavacarya, a Vaishnavite (Hindhu) scholar. Read more : http://www.archive.org/stream/sarvadarsanasamg035018mbp#page/n35/mode/2up

The system of philosophy named after its founder, Carvaka, was set out in the Brhaspati Sutra in India probably about 600 BCE. This text has not survived and, like similar philosophies in Greece, much of what we know of it comes from polemics against it and remarks by its critics. There is a further similarity with Greece in that this is a rationalistic and skeptical philosophy, thus undermining the widespread belief in the West that Indian philosophy is primarily religious and mystical. Amartya Sen has argued, in fact, that there is a larger volume of atheistic and agnostic writings in Pali and Sanskrit than in any other classical tradition—Greek, Latin, Hebrew, or Arabic. He adds that this applies also to Buddhism, the only agnostic world religion ever to emerge. Read more : http://www.humanistictexts.org/carvaka.htm

Professor Edward Byles Cowell FBA (January 23, 1826 – February 9, 1903) was a noted translator of Persian poetry and the first professor of Sanskrit at Cambridge University. Cowell was born in Ipswich, and became interested in Oriental languages at the age of fifteen, when he found a copy of Sir William Jones's works (including his Persian Grammar) in the public library. Self-taught, he began translating and publishing Hafez within the year. On the death of his father in 1842 he took over the family business. He married in 1845, and in 1850 entered Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied and catalogued Persian manuscripts for the Bodleian Library. From 1856-1867 he lived in Calcutta as professor of English history at Presidency College, and from 1858 also as principal of Sanskrit College. In this year he discovered a manuscript of Omar Khayyám's quatrains in the Asiatic Society's library and sent a copy to London for his friend and student, Edward Fitzgerald, who then produced the famous English translations (the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, 1859). He also published, unsigned, an introduction to Khayyám with translations of thirty quatrains in the Calcutta Review (1858). Having studied Hindustani, Bengali, and Sanskrit with Indian scholars, he returned to England to take up an appointment as the first professor of Sanskrit at Cambridge. He was professor from 1867 until his death in 1903.[1] He was made an honorary member of the German Oriental Society (DMG) in 1895, was awarded the Royal Asiatic Society's first gold medal in 1898, and in 1902 became a founding member of the British Academy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Byles_Cowell

I wish it would be scanned and then published again, so the large public can read it. Or is it done already?

Why is there always a woman portrayed on covers? Indian women seem so harsh to me that I do not understand why anyone would want to portray them, and especially on the cover of a book.

Science and Philosophy in Ancient India By Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya In ancient India, the only discipline that aspired to be fully secular and promised—though inevitably in a rather rudimentary form—the beginnings of natural science in the modern sense, was medicine or Ayurveda. It moreover represented the original nucleus from which could eventually branch off specialised sciences like botany and zoology, anatomy and physiology, meteorology and metallurgy, even physics and chemistry. Besides, for all that we know of ancient Indian culture, it was in the medical circle that a conscious attempt to settle the question of the methodology of natural science was first developed. The significance of this for the development of Indian logic is already discussed by S. N. Dasgupta. [1] Let us first try to be clear about the importance of Ayurveda in the history of Indian science. The other disciplines more talked of in the orthodox circles are phonetics (siksa), grammar (vyakarana), etymology (nirukta), metrics (chandas), proto‑astronomy (jyotisa) and even proto‑geometry (sulva)—the last in the restricted sense of being a part of the ritual technique or kalpa. Like the ritual technique, however, all these originate in the priestly corporations as aids to their scriptural lore. The traditional word for them is vedanga, literally the limb of Veda or scripture. These disciplines thus bear the birth‑mark of religion or anti‑secularism, and as al‑Beruni [2] —the great visiting scientist of the eleventh century showed, specially in the case of Brahmagupta's astronomy—they faced formidable difficulties in developing towards natural science in real sense. Brahmagupta (born c A. D. 598), in his famous astronomical work, could move towards science proper only after paying heavy ransom to religion. By contrast, already in a very early period, medicine—in spite of its inevitable humble beginning—took the momentous step forward from magico‑religious therapeutics to rational therapeutics, i.e. in the language of the grand medical compilation called the Caraka‑samhita, from daiva‑vyapasraya bhesaja to yukti‑vyapasraya bhesaja. Our text defines the former as the healing art based on charms, incantations, prayers, propitiation, and the like, i.e. what was mainly prescribed in the ancient Atharvaveda and what is also being observed among the tribal peoples surviving in certain pockets of the modern world. [3] But it is not the system of medicine which the Caraka‑samhita itself defends. What it is interested instead is in the system of rationalist medicine or yukti‑vyapasraya bhesaja, defined as medicine based on the use of various natural substances used as diets and drugs, and which, as it is repeatedly claimed, has “directly perceptible results" (pratyaksa‑laksana‑phalah) [4] like the correction of any imbalance of the body‑materials viewed as the actual cause of disease. Read more : http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/chatto2.html

Lokayata By Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya 'Thought and consciousness’, says Engels, 'are products of the human brain.' The truth of this, as George Thomson comments, 'is so plain that it might almost seem to be obvious; yet philosophers have piled tome upon tome in order to deny, distort or obscure it.' Thus a large section of the contemporary philosophers, 'while claiming to be specialists in the study of thought, continue their disputations without regard to what scientists have learnt about the actual mechanism of the human brain.’ [1] In Indian philosophy, as we have seen, the Nyaya‑Vaisesikas, with their serious preoccupation with the problems of epistemology, argued that the material body was indispensable for consciousness. Yet they could not outgrow the age‑old superstition about the soul and its liberation. Knowledge, feeling and volition were conceived as states of an embodied soul and in liberation, the soul becoming disembodied, was devoid of consciousness. It was but one step further to establish epistemology on a secure scientific basis and assert that it was plain nonsense to talk of a soul apart from the body and that the conception of liberation was at best a deception. This step was actually taken by our Lokayatas or the Carvakas, i.e. the ancient materialists. Here now [said Samkara] the Lokayatikas, who see the Self in the body only, are of opinion that a Self separate from the body does not exist; assume that consciousness, although not observed in earth and other external elements—either single or combined—may yet appear in them when transformed into the shape of a body, so that consciousness springs from them; and thus maintain that knowledge is analogous to intoxicating quality (which arises when certain materials are mixed in certain proportions), and that man is only a body qualified by consciousness. There is thus, according to them, no Self separate from the body and capable of going to the heavenly world or obtaining release, through which consciousness is in the body; but the body alone is what is conscious, is the Self. For this assertion they allege the reason, 'On account of its existence where a body is'. For wherever something exists if some other thing exists, and does not exist if that other thing does not exist, we determine the former thing to be a quality of the latter; light and heat, e.g., we determine to be qualities of fire. And as life, movement, consciousness. remembrance and so on—which by the upholders of an independent Self are considered qualities of that Self—are observed only within bodies and not outside bodies, and as an abode of these qualities different from the body cannot be proved, it follows that they must be qualities of the body only; The Self, therefore, is not different from the body. [2] The author of the Brahma‑sutra designed two aphorisms specially to represent and refute this philosophy. In the Buddhist Pitakas, we come across not only the name Lokayata but also distinct references to the view that identified the body with the Self. Along with the Samkhya and Yoga. the Arthasastra (c. 4th century B.C.) mentioned the Lokayata. The Mahabharata and the earliest Jaina sources, too, mentioned this philosophy and even the Upanisads were not silent about materialism, Judging from all these, we can easily see that the materialist tradition in India is very old—probably as old as Indian philosophy itself. Under these circumstances, we do not expect our ancient materialists to have gained a positive knowledge of the brain and understood consciousness as its function. Nevertheless, extremely meagre though their scientific data were, the way in which they tried to explain consciousness in terms of their own observations was really remarkable. 'The Lokayatikas', said Samkara, 'do not admit the existence of anything but the four elements.' [3] By themselves the elements did not possess consciousness, still consciousness was viewed as emerging from them. How could that be possible? Just as rice, argued the Lokayatikas, and the other ingredients of producing wine did not by themselves possess any intoxicating quality, yet, when combined in a particular way, these caused the intoxicating quality to emerge, so did the material elements constituting the material human body, though. themselves without consciousness, caused consciousness to emerge when combined in a particular way to form the human body. It was surely one of the most significant things said by our ancients to establish the primacy of matter over the spirit. Read more: http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/lokayata1.html

ayurveda, like hinduism,is a portmanteau word..and it means many things to many people...medical practices developed by different schools of thought..the Buddhists.,the jains, the vedic brahmins, the nomadic and semi-nomadic mendicants,medicine men and tribes people...all gets mixed up ..in the longrun of over 2000 years ..use of leeches to suck out 'bad' blood..use of goat meat to plaster a broken bone, ajamamsa rasayanam(etc..) with bhasmas and lehyas..they all get get mixed up in the present-day ayurveda mall..can we have more clarity on the contribution of each school of thought..seperately..how is the buddhist medicine man different from the jain naturo-path and how are the two diffent from the vedic hindu yagna-centric treatment of illenesses ..on their varying thoughts on life..death ..and other issues like tackiling everyday diseases and illnesses..there is a lesson there in those ancient texts .. how are terminally ill people..treated ..when are they given up for good...do you have a translation of 'charaka samhita'?

What about Kapila's philosophy -It is as agnostic if not more than buddhism ?