1862.] 
389 
The Charvaka System of Philosophy. 
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. Shu Harsha is the advocate of a pecu¬ 
liar school of Hindu philosophy, which holds the same place between 
the older Darsffinas 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 hrofi] between equally balanced alternatives. 
In the same way Shu Harsha in his celebrated work Khandana - 
Khanda-Khadya (‘ the sweetmeat of universal refutation’) has endea¬ 
voured to establish a quasi Vedantic aKaTaXrjxf/La or h roy?) 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 (ctnirvaclianiya,) while we maintain that every¬ 
thing is inexplicable except the mere fact of knowing.” We are 
hardly likely, therefore, to be doing Shu Harsha much injustice, if we 
