1862.] The Ghdrvdka System of Philosophy. 3S9 



The most remarkable part of this singular episode is the rejoinder 

 of the four gods to the Charvaka's attack, as it is difficult to con- 

 ceive that the arguments adduced could ever have been considered as 

 of any weight in the discussion. It is perhaps a bold surmise, but I can- 

 not help drawing the inference, that we have here a symptom of a very 

 important phase of Hindu thought which has been only casually no- 

 ticed by European inquirers. S'ri Harsha is the advocate of a pecu- 

 liar school of Hindu philosophy, which holds the same place between 

 the older Dars'anas and the absolute negation of the Charvakas, as 

 the sceptical school of Pyrrho and the new academy of Arcesilaus 

 did with regard to the older Greek systems and the later Epicureans. 

 " Academici novam induxerunt scientiam, nihil scire," says Seneca ; 

 and Pyrrho's doctrines are well enough known to us in that " armou- 

 ry of scepticism," Sextus Empiricus, where every department of 

 human knowledge is attacked, and every affirmation or negation met 

 by the same unruffled liroxq between equally balanced alternatives. 



In the same way S'ri Harsha in his celebrated work Khanclana- 

 Khanda-Khddya (' the sweetmeat of universal refutation') has endea- 

 voured to establish a quasi Vedantic d/cco-aA^i/aa or e7ro^ of his own. He 

 tries to show that every system of philosophy involves in its first 

 principles the elements of its own overthrow, and each in turn falls 

 before his analysis. The only thing that remains amidst this uni- 

 versal refutation is the mere fact that we know, — the object matter of 

 this knowledge is alike illusory and impossible, but the exercise of 

 intelligence in our knowing is true. To use his own words, " we 

 in fact, desisting from any attempt to establish the existence or the 

 non-existence of the external world, are perfectly contented to rest 

 all our weight on the one Brahma, identical with thought, establish- 

 ed by its own evidence ; but as for those who descend into the arena 

 of controversy and desire by means of their own imagined arguments 

 and refutations to discover and establish the actual truth of things, 

 we can always maintain as against them, that their mode of proce- 

 dure is fallacious, since it can always be confuted by the very princi- 

 ples that they lay down." And again " the only difference between 

 us and the Saugatas (or Buddhists) is that they maintain that every- 

 thing is inexplicable (anirvachaniya,') while we maintain that every- 

 thing is inexplicable except the mere fact of knowing." We are 

 hardly likely, therefore, to be doing S'ri Harsha much injustice, if we 



