Jiva

MIND, MATTER AND GOD : JIVA, JADA AND ISVARA
M.M.NINAN
utterers of Vedic incantations, burnt up by the bolt of Indra, like a tree covered with
leaves. Mahabharata 12. 1. 414
Carvakas met their doom as exemplified by the Mahabaharata Story on the onslaught of
the Aryan thrust. They were neither organized nor powerful to withstand the gods of the
other world. A few Dalits who have taken up the fight at other level today tell the story.
Brahmana-Kshatriya hegemony was an ongoing process. These two -The Priests and
the State - worked hand in hand to keep the others in subjugation. That does not mean
there were no literatures, thought or leaders in that group. Only that we did not get them.
If they tried they were destroyed. We should note that the Rakshasas were as powerful
as the Asuras if not more. They had probably greater science including Vimana.
However because they repudiated any tradition, they failed to form a system of teaching
their philosophy and died out. Rationalism hence appears and reappears in history.
Other forms of Hindu Philosophy survived not because of their intrinsic merit but
because of the rigorous method of parampara and insistence on this as a dharma.
The most famous of these teachers who rejected the Vedic orthodoxy were of course
the Buddha and Mahavira. There were other thinkers in this period who are documented
in the Buddhist and Jain literature. Makkhali Gosala and the Ajivikas, and Ajita
Kesakambala once started the materialism took different turns. They produced the
development of Art and Science including Ayrveda. They took the materialism to the
extremes of hedonism - Kama Sastra which mixed with other systems developed
Kundalini Yoga and the Sex Arts.
Now at that time the Chabbagiya Bhikkhus learnt the Lokayata system. People
murmured, .., saying "Like those who still enjoy the pleasures of the world!"
The Bhikkhus heard of people thus murmuring; and those Bhikkhus told the matter to
the Blessed One.
"Now can a man who holds the Lokayata as valuable reach up, O Bhikkhus, to the full
37