371 
The Charvaka System of Philosophy. 
[No. 4, 
pears as a demon in the Mahabharata, and he is there described as 
billed by the curses of some Brahmans of Yudhishthira’s party. 
Some authorities say that Brihaspati taught his doctrines to his 
disciple Charvaka, but if vve may judge by the occasional quotations, 
the so-called Brihaspati-s'astra must have been from ancient times 
the text-book of the sect. No copy is now known to exist,* but we 
have quite enough extant in the form of quotations to enable us to 
judge of the character of the work. Its author, like Lucretius among 
the Romans or Omar Khayyam among the Persians, was strong to 
overthrow,—he could ridicule the absurdities of superstition, but he 
was blind to the religious instincts which underlie them,—and hence 
they are, all alike, men 
—when faitli had fall’n asleep, 
Who heard a voice ‘ believe no more,’ 
And heard an ever-breaking shore 
That tumbled in the godless deep. 
Of course if we look at these blind gropings of bewildered humanity 
simply in themselves, they can have nothing to teach or even interest 
us ; but it is not so, if we consider them in relation to the history of 
the human mind. The Charvaka doctrines, and in fact, all such 
purely negative systems, may be regarded from three separate points 
of view, and it is as seen under these several aspects that they present 
such widely varying characters. If we only look at them so far as 
they deny the deepest instincts of our nature, we can but turn from 
them in disgust and horror,—the belief in God and in the soul’s immor¬ 
tality are not the results of logical inference, but the very postulates 
of human thought, and we deny our own humanity if we choose to 
question them. Again, so far as these sceptical systems only uttered 
a protest against the superstitions of their age, we may regard them 
not only with pity but with mournful interest. But so far as they 
express the negative side of philosophy, they may even claim our 
most serious attention, for they help us to remember those natural 
limitations and defects of the human mind, which we are so apt to 
forget in the excitement of new discoveries. Are they not in fact 
* Since writing this paper we have received the third part of Vol. XIX. of the 
Royal Asiatic Society’s Journal, which contains a paper by Mr. Muir on the 
fragments of Brihaspati as compared with similar passages in the Ramayana 
and Vishnu Purana. He there states that Dr. Hall had in vain searched for any 
copy of these Barhaspatya S'lokas. We may well despair of their being ever 
found, if even the discoverer of the Bharatiya S'astra has failed to find any trace.’ 
