Makaranda Madhukar Anand Mahendale Festshrift

Author(s): M A Dhaky, Jitendra B Shah
Publisher: Shardaben Chimanbhai Educational Research Centre

Page 212

The Resurrection of Cārvāka
201
enemies and what not everything material. Under these circumstances, I fail to understand why DPC had to rely on a solitary and rare example of the chanting dogs. Apparently it is confusion, may be deliberate, or judicial blindness' as Marx remarks. It is amusing to see this latter criticism, flung by DPC on non-Marxists, devolve on the champion of Marxism himself.
Totemism
Whenever DPC finds references to animals and plants in ancient Sanskrit literature, he thinks of totemism. Now, totemism is understood as taking animals as emblems of families. The chanting dogs, names of humans after birds and animals are, he thinks, indicators of totemism; and lots of these are found in ancient Indian society. Conceding his view as a possibility, how can he explain the fact that various physical postures in the Yoga tradition are named after animals and birds ? Is Yoga also materialistic in essence and a characteristic of the primitive society ? The primitive society which can develop such a complicated system as Yoga must be far advanced than many developed and civilized ones! I am aware that, in DPC's view, Yoga has its origin in the magic of the primitive man; but, as shown earlier, magic and materialism do not go together. Even if they are supposed to go together, the outlook and the approach of these two, on the one hand, and those of Yoga, on the other, are diametrically opposite—the former recognising no goal beyond worldly gains, and the latter advising control of mind through discarding everything worldly for spiritual sublimation.
Talking of the chanting dogs in the Chāndogya Upanişad (I.12.4) out of which he has made his major capital, DPC has blamed Radhakrishnan for tampering with the contents of the original passage by making the dogs go around, each following dog holding the tail of the preceding one. Had he consulted the śāmkarabhāsya on the passage, he would have found it to be Radhakrishnan's source. It is sarkara who, considering that the dogs are meant to imitate the style of the brahmins going around in a particular ritual (associated with the bahispavamāna song) in a Soma sacrifice, each holding on to the one ahead of him (cf. Śrautakośa by Dandekar and Kashikar, English version, Vol. II, Pt. II, p. 454), makes the dogs hold tails, in a bid to complete the comparison. So, the blame, if any, lies at the door of Samkara. But the