Sambodhi 2002 Vol 25

Author(s): Jitendra B Shah, N M Kansara
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 89

84
RAMKRISHNA BHATTACHARYA
SAMBODHI 23. As heat is an inherent property of the Sun and of Fire, as cold of the
Moon, fluidity of water, and heaviness of stones, and as the Air is volatile, as the earth is naturally immovable. For oh ! the properties existing in things are wonderful. (Trans. Lancelot Wilkinson)
AFTERWORD It is evident from the above verses that the Alpha and the Omega of the doctrine of svabhāva may be encapsulated in three words : nirīśvarată (atheism), ākasmikatva (accidentalism) and akriya (inactivism). Pseudo-Sankara, the commentator on the Sv. Up., and some other writers (both brahminical and Jain) distinguish svabhāva from yadrcchā,5 but some others (more particularly the Buddhists, Naiyāyika-s and some other Vedāntins) treat svabhāva as equivalent to yadrcchā, Thus, svabhāva could mean both causality inherent in every phenomenon (although not the one imposed from outside by any agency such as God, a doctrine in contrast called parabhāva in the Mahābhārata, Säntiparvan, 172.10)' as well as chance. At the present state of our knowledge we have no way to solve this crux.
Another crux lies in ascertaining the relation of svabhāvavāda to the Cärväka/ Lokāyata system of philosoply. We read of svabhāva and bhūtāni as two different and apparently divergent doctrines in the Sv. Up., 1. 2. The proto-materialists of India (i. e., the pre-Cārvāka philosophers referred to as ucchedavādins by the early Buddhists, tajjīva-tacchariravādins by the Jains and bhūtacintaka-s by a redactor of the Mahābhārata) spoke in terms of five elements, while the Cārvāka-s admitted only four (earth, air, fire and water, sky excluded).' In any case, we do not hear of the name of Cārvāka before the eighth century C.E.10 The word, lokāyata in the Buddhist works means nothing but vitandasattham, vitandāśāstra, the science of disputation." But there were materialists of other kinds before them, right from the time of the Chandogya Upanişad (in which the doctrine is associated with the asura-s, demons).12
Thus the two doctrines, those of svabhāva and the Carvāka / Lokāyata, must have originated quite independent of each other but, at some juncture (unfortunately we do not know precisely when), they may have coalesced. The Lokāyatika-s may have incorporated the doctrine of inherent nature in their system. This is suggested by the anonymous commentary on the SK available only in the Chinese translation by Paramārtha and more explicitly by Utpalabhatta in Svi (on BS, 1.7) as also by the anonymous Cūrni on SKS.13