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Appendix to Volume I duced (utpadyate) from the four elements, and according to others it is manifested (abhivyajyate) from them like fermenting intoxication (surā) or acids. It is on account of diverse kinds of arrangements and rearrangements of the atoms of air, water, fire and earth that consciousness is either produced or manifested and the bodies and senses are formed or produced. There is nothing else but these atomic arrangements, and there is also no further separate category
The school of Suśikṣita Cārvākas holds that, so long as the body remains, there is an entity which remains as the constant perceiver and enjoyer of all experiences. But no such thing exists after the destruction of the body. If there was anything like a permanent self that migrated from one body to another, then it would have remembered the incidents of the past life just as a man remembers the experiences of his childhood or youth2. Arguing against the Buddhist view that the series of conscious states in any life can be due to the last conscious state before death in a previous life, or that no state of consciousness in any life can be the cause of the series of conscious states in another future life, the Cārvākas say that no consciousness that belongs to a different body and a different series can be regarded as the cause of a different series of conscious states belonging to a different body. Like cognitions belonging to a different series, no cognition can be caused by the ultimate state of consciousness of a past body3. Again, since the last mental state of a saint cannot produce other mental states in a separate birth, it is wrong to suppose that the last mental state of a dying man should be able to produce any series of mental states in a new birth. For this reason the Cārvāka teacher Kambalāśvatara says that consciousness is produced from the body through the operation of the vital functions of prāņa, apāna and other bio-motor faculties. It is also wrong to suppose that there is any dormant consciousness in the early stages of the foetal life, for consciousness means the cognition of objects, and there cannot be any consciousness in the foetal state when no sense-organs are properly developed; so also there is no consciousness in a state of swoon, and
tat-samudāye vişaye-ndriya-samjñā. Cārvāka-sūtra quoted in Kamalasīla's Pañjikā, p. 520.
2 Nyāya-mañjari, p. 467.
3 yadi jñānam na tad vivakṣitā-tīta-deha-varti-caram ajñāna-janyam. jñānatvāt yathā'nya-santāna-varti-jñānam. Kamalasila's Pañjikā, p. 521.