Introduction

A collection of all available Cārvāka fragments has been a desideratum since Henry Thomas Colebrooke first wrote on the materialist tradition in India in 1827. For a pretty long time scholars relied almost exclusively on S-M's exposition in the SDS, Chapter 1. Slow but steady discovery of many a Cārvāka fragment, specially in the Buddhist and Jain works and other compendia of philosophical systems, made it clear that there was more than meets the eye. Formerly only two legendary names were associated with the materialist system: Bṛhaspati and Cārvāka. Śāntarakṣita's TS and Kamalaśīla's TSP provide three historical names of Cārvāka authors: Aviddhakarṇa, Kambalāśvatara and Purandara. Cakradhara mentions two more: Bhaṭṭa Udbhaṭa and Bhāvivikta. Several aphorisms and extracts from the works of these commentators were welcome additions to the meagre number of Cārvāka fragments known before the 1920s.

D.R. Shastri (1894-1961) first attempted to compile the Cārvāka fragments in his English-Sanskrit work, Chārvāka Shashṭi (1928). Not satisfied with those attributed to Bṛhaspati or the Cārvāka-s in general, he sought to find materialist traits in other systems of philosophy. Thus he compiled one hundred aphorisms from various sources, some of which, however, are not of Cārvāka origin (he quoted from the Mīmāṃsā-, Nyāya- and Sāṃkhya-sūtra-s as well). He also reproduced sixty verses (hence the title of the work, Cārvāka-ṣaṣṭi). They are taken from the NC by Śrīharṣa (verses 1-47), SDS by Mādhavācārya (48-55, 57-59), VMT by Cirañīva Bhaṭṭācārya (56) and ṢDSam by Haribhadra (60).