Studies in Indian Philosophy

Author(s): Dalsukh Malvania, Nagin J Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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Studies in Indian Philosophy
these properities should be exhibited even by a dead body. The Lokāyata philosophers defended their position by maintaiping that a body exhibiting mental properities possesses a characteristic sort of organisation which a dead body totally Jacks. In this connection it was easy for them to mention the bodily functions like breathing asd palpitation of heart which are present in a living body and are absent in a dead one, but the difficulty is that the anti-materialist philosopher would submit that these bodily functions are there owing to the presense of an extra-corporeal reality mind there. Thus the controversy remained inconclusive but it can certainly be seen that the logical defect called 'heaviness of hypothesis' vitiates the anti-materialist position. Really, the Lokāyata philosophers were criticised not so much because of the basic ontological position they advocated as because of the supposedly dangerous ethical implication inherent in this position. For the position that mind is no independent real implied the position that there takes place no transmigration of mind from one body to another - whereas it was in terms of the dogma of transmigration of mind that the anti-materialist philosophers explained a man's worldly sufferings and enjoyments. Thus the Lokāyata philosophers were charged with having preached a denial of all ethical behaviour. They of course did not plead guilty to the charge and sought to
lain all ethical behaviour in terms of this worldly happe. nings, but their voice was drowned in the din of denunciation and as a result their position remained on the whole mis. understood.
Then we come to the positions maintained by the idealist philosophers of India. In this connection it might be noted that here there were current two varieties of idealism - one a rather mild one and the other a rather rabid one. The mild variety of idealism was preached as early as the times of the old Upanişads where it was maintained that a mental reality Brahman is the ultimate cause of all material and mental worldly phenomena, a position also maintained by Bādarāyana