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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Materialism, it has been said, is as old as philosophy. India too had her share of heretics, sceptics and proto-materialists right from the Vedic times. We read of them in the Upaniṣads and the epics. “Any number of these unbelievers is known, who deny everything there is to deny,” said Hopkins. “Materialists and other heretics without special designation appear to fill the whole land.” As the culmination to all these developments we have the Cārvāka/Lokāyata system of philosophy.
How and from when did materialism face a challenge? According to Frauwallner,
Its situation becomes more difficult at the end of the classical period of Indian philosophy, when logical and epistemological questions moved to the forefront of interest and when every system was compelled to take them into consideration, on which their systems were founded. The adherents of the Lokāyata also could not escape this demand. Originally they made light of the fact. In the sūtras of Bṛhaspati it is said: “The only means of right knowledge is sense perception,” “The inference is not the means of right knowledge.” One, therefore, appealed only to sense-experience and simply dismissed the further assertions of the opponent. One could do it so long as inferences which were arrived at by the antagonistic schools were simple inferences by analogy. It was enough to show the fault of every conclusion, in order to decline every inference as unreliable. Things, however, were different, as the opponent developed the firmly grounded scientific doctrines forming conclusions. […]
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