A Source Book of Indian Materialism

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The title of the book itself discloses its importance. Truly speaking without materialism cultivation of Indian Philosophical schools is absurd. Almost all of the Indian schools either oppose or refute this system. The author deals with the Indian Materialism in all its a aspects historically, analytically and comparatively. An attempt is here made to expound the Carvaka School and to analysis its logical implications. From the academic point of view this book is remarkable as there is hardly any work which treats original source materials.

A Scholar extraordinary, Prof. Amit Bhattacharjee was born at the Midnapore town of West Bengal in 1956. He studied in the special discipline of Nyaya-Vaisheshika in the department of Sanskrit of the University of Calcutta and stood first class first in the M.A. Examination.

He was honoured with a number of awards and scholarships including a gold medal from the University of Calcutta.

His primary interest, however, rotates round the Katha discipline of India philosophy and Lokovyabahar. Many of his research papers on diverse subject have been published in national and international journals. He has taught at a number premier institutions, of Bengal including Narasinha Dutt college, Ramkrisna Mission Vidya Mandir (Belur), Rabindra Bharati University and, Burdwan University.

A Lifetime member of the Asiatic Society, Kolkata and Sanskrita Sahitya Parishad, he is currently attached to the University of calcutaa as a distinguished Professor of comparative Indian Language & Literature.

This book is an outcome of a workshop organized by ICPR Lucknow held on 29th to 9 May, 2013. We (Professor V N Jha, Professor Pradeep Gokhale and I myself) were invited as resource persons to conduct the said workshop. But Professor Gokhale had to leave the workshop due to his urgent piece of business. He had presented the general outlook of materialism through his lectures.

Professor V N Jha believed that to acquire better knowledge in any system of Indian Philosophical School one must read original source materials. Therefore, according to his planning, we decided to teach various philosophical texts where materialistic though or Lokayatika Bhavanas are described vividly.

Since most of the participants did not have prior knowledge of Lokayata system and they came from a variety of disciplines and academic levels, the emphasis was given on the essential concepts and lucid presentation of the subjects matter, so that participants might draw maximum advantage to understand the concepts.

Being requested by the participants and having seen their response professor V N jha advised me to write a book on this topic and I have carried out his advice with considerable effort. As result of this ‘A source book of Indian materialism has been prepared.

Although there is no dearth of book on this subject and most of which are quite good but still the addition of another is justified as in this edition source materials are added in original form. So this book shall meet the needs of students and scholars alike.

The users of the garlands are seen to take interest in preparing garlands with new arrangements with the same flowers with which they had decorated their hair before several times.

This book is divided into two parts. The topics of both parts are organized to meet the requirements. The first half comprises of the topics like contextual history of carvaka, classification of carvakas, brief analysis of matter and form, dialectical materialism, idea of materialism in Greek philosophy, view of the opponents, denunciation of the Vedas above all contribution of Bengal in elaborating materialism etc.