ajAti vAda

Transliteration Key
There are various traditional schools of philosophy in India, often classified into
orthodox (Astika) and heterodox (nAstika) systems. This classification is mainly based
upon the acceptance or otherwise of the vedas. [***] The vedas are four in number -
Rg, yajus, sAma and atharva. Each veda consists of mantra portions (hymns), also called
karma kANDa, and brAhmaNa portions (in prose and verse) including upanishads
(esoteric doctrine) and AraNyakas (forest treatises), also called jnAna kANDa.
A key concept in understanding the structure of Indian philosophies is that of
purushArtha - the goals of mankind. As far as life in this world is concerned, these goals
are three - dharma - to lead an ethical life, artha - to acquire wealth, position and
social/political status, and kAma - to fulfil all other desires, including sexual desire. The
fourth purushArtha, namely moksha - salvation/liberation, deals not with life in this
world, but with the eternal destiny of the individual. The various Indian schools of
philosophy and religion differ mainly on questions of dharma and moksha.
The heterodox Indian schools explicitly reject the claim of the vedas to being an
independently valid source of knowledge about dharma and moksha. These schools are:
• lokAyata or cArvAka (materialists)
• bauddha (including a number of schools of Buddhism)
• jaina or syAdvAda (Jainism, including digambara and SvetAmbara groups)
The cArvAka school has died a natural death in India. It is said to be based on the
lokAyata sUtras of bRhaspati. Most of our information about the cArvAkas comes from
the tattvopaplavasimha of jayarASi, and from later anthological texts. It is usually
portrayed as a crass materialism, which promoted immoral behavior, and endorsed an
early Indian equivalent of Machiavellian politics. The cArvAkas are said to have
recognized only artha and kAma as valid goals in life, both dharma and moksha not
being amenable to direct perception, and therefore invalid. A more charitable view
regards this school as an Indian version of skepticism.
Buddhism is a world religion, having spread to all parts of Asia, and is now spreading to
Europe and the Americas too. In India itself, Buddhism has more or less died out, except
in the north-east, and in Ladakh, near Kashmir. Buddhism is returning to India in recent
times, with the formation of the neo-Buddhist communities in Central India, and the
presence of Tibetan refugees and the Dalai Lama. In contrast, Jainism has always
flourished all over India, and is practised by large numbers of Indian trading
communities. Jainas are found from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka in the south to the
Gangetic plains in the north. Gujarat and Rajasthan have significant Jaina populations.
Both Buddhism and Jainism place a high value on dharma and moksha, but deny the
validity of the vedas in this regard.