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SEN : SCHOOLS AND SECTS IN JAIN LITERATURE
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hereafter. Silānka quotes the notorious statement attributes to Cārvāka wherein the latter holds that there is nothing beyond what is perceived by the senses, the past never returns, there is no karman or its effects, the dead never comes back, there is no future life and that the body is but the fortuitous combination of the elements.
The Parable of the Lotus-pool states the doctrine in the following manner :
There are only the five elements through which is explained whether an action is good or bad. The five elements are not created, directly or indirectly, nor made; they are neither effects nor products, they are without beginning and end, they always produce effects, are independent of a directing cause, they are eternal. What is does not perish, from nothing nothing comes. All living beings, all things, the whole world consists of nothing but these five elements. They are the primary cause of the world even down to a blade of the grass. A man buys or causes to buy, kills or causes to kill, cooks and causes to cook, he may even sell and kill a man- and even then he does not do any wrong.”
In the Sāmaññaphala Sutta of the Buddhists the doctrines said to belong to Ajita Kesakambali are an echo of Nāstika -vāda. Ajita taught that there is no such thing as alms or sacrifice or offering. There is neither fruit nor result of good or evil deeds. There is no such thing as this world or the next. After death the elements constituting the body return to the elements. On the dissolution of the body everyone is cut off, annihilated and after death there is nothing. 78 77. Sat.S. II.1.21-24 78. Barua : A History of Pre-Buddhistic Indian Philosophy,
p. 293, points out that Ajita's views were not materialistic in the gross sense in which they were understood by Mahavira and Buddha, but what he really meant was a protest against the view the soul and body were entirely separated.
