that there was nothing but the four elements of earth, water, air and fire, and that the body was but the result of atomic combination.  There was no self or soul, no virtue or vice.  The Sus’ik@sita Carvakas held that there was a soul apart from the body but that it also was destroyed with the destruction of the body.  The original work of the Carvakas was written in sutras probably by B@rhaspati.  Jayanta and Gu@naratna quote two sutras from it.  Short accounts of this school may be found in Jayanta’s Nyayamanjari, Madhava’s Sarvadars’anasa@mgraha and Gu@naratna’s Tarkarahasyadipika. Mahabharata gives an account of a man called Carvaka meeting Yudhi@s@thira.

Side by side with the doctrine of the Carvaka materialists we are reminded of the Ajivakas of which Makkhali Gosala, probably a renegade disciple of the Jain saint Mahavira and a contemporary of Buddha and Mahavira, was the leader.  This was a thorough-going determinism denying the free will of man and his moral responsibility for any so-called good or evil.  The essence of Makkhali’s system is this, that “there is no cause, either proximate or remote, for the depravity of beings or for their purity.  They

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become so without any cause.  Nothing depends either on one’s own efforts or on the efforts of others, in short nothing depends on any human effort, for there is no such thing as power or energy, or human exertion.  The varying conditions at any time are due to fate, to their environment and their own nature [Footnote ref 1].”

Another sophistical school led by Ajita Kesakambali taught that there was no fruit or result of good or evil deeds; there is no other world, nor was this one real; nor had parents nor any former lives any efficacy with respect to this life.  Nothing that we can do prevents any of us alike from being wholly brought to an end at death [Footnote ref 2].

There were thus at least three currents of thought:  firstly the sacrificial Karma by the force of the magical rites of which any person could attain anything he desired; secondly the Upani@sad teaching that the Brahman, the self, is the ultimate reality and being, and all else but name and form which pass away but do not abide.  That which permanently abides without change is the real and true, and this is self.  Thirdly the nihilistic conceptions that there is no law, no abiding reality, that everything comes into being by a fortuitous concourse of circumstances or by some unknown fate.  In each of these schools, philosophy had probably come to a deadlock.  There were the Yoga practices prevalent in the country and these were accepted partly on the strength of traditional custom among certain sections, and partly by virtue of the great spiritual, intellectual and physical power which they gave to those who performed them.  But these had no rational basis behind them on which they could lean for support.  These were probably then just tending towards being affiliated to the