18 RELIGIOUS SECTS 



The Chdrmkas were so named from one of their teachers, the Muni 

 CharvAka. From Vrihaspati — some of whose dogmas have been quoted 

 from the work of Madhava, they are termed also Vdrhaspatyas. The appella- 

 tion Sunya Vddi, implies the asserter of the unreality and emptiness of the uni- 

 verse, and another designation, LoMyata, expresses their adoption of the tenet, 

 that this being is the Be-all of existence : they were, in short, the advocates of 

 materialism and atheism, and have existed from a very remote period, and 

 still exist, as we shall hereafter see. 



The Saugatas are identified even by Madhava with the Bauddhas, but 

 . there seems to have been some, although probably not any very essential dif- 

 ference : the chief tenet of this class, according to Ananda Giri, was their 

 adopting the doctrine taught by Sugata MuNi, that tenderness towards ani- 

 mated nature comprehends all moral and devotional duty, a tenet which is, in 

 a great measure, common to both the Baiiddha and Jaina schisms : it is to be 

 feared, that the personal description of the Saugata, as a man of a fat body 

 and small head, although possibly intended to characterise the genus, will not 

 direct us to the discovery of its origin or history. The Kshapanaka again has 

 always been described by Hindu writers as a Bauddha, or sometimes even a 

 Jahia naked mendicant : in the work before us he appears as the professor of a 

 sort of astrological religion, in which* time is the principal divinity, and he 

 is described as carrying, in either hand, the implements of his science, or a 

 Gola Yantra^ and Turya Yantra, the former of which is an arraillary sphere, 



* Time is the Supreme Deity. Iswara cannot urge on the present. He who knows time 

 knows Brahme. Space and time are not distinct from God. 



