CĀRVĀKA. A school of "materialists" thought to have been contemporary with early Buddhism, the Cārvāka school, or Cārvākas, has only scant evidence to attest to its existence. Writing in Hastings's Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Louis de La Vallée Poussin noted that "a materialistic school, a system in the exact sense of the term" did not exist in India. Such an opinion was based not upon the failure of scholars to recognize such terms as lokāyata ("world-extended"?) or cārvāka, or the schools known by these names, but upon the ambiguity and obscurity that certainly surround their origin and exact connotation. In earlier literature the term lokāyata did not stand for a doctrine that is necessarily materialistic. In the Buddhist collection Saṃyutta Nikāya, two brahmans are described...