CHARV,AKA, a Hindu philosopher who lived about the third century of the Christian era, and founded a school of materialism. The atheistical philosophy which he put forward is called Loka yata, and its followers Loka-yati. It forms one of the six atheistical systems of philosophy current amongst the eastern Aryan race in India. The other five are the Yogachara, Sidhanta, Wai bashika, Madhyamica, and Digambara, all full of indeterminate phrases, and containing a jumble of atheism and ethics. The derivation of Charvaka is from Charoo, insinuating, and Yaks, a word. Charvaka, as the founder of the materialistic school of the Hindus, was the Pyrrho and Epicurus of India. The Charvaka system does not recognise the authority of the Vedas. The sect maintain that in this world of continual changes, which is developed out of four principal elements, pro sperity is heaven and adversity is hell, and that there is no other heaven or hell besides these con ditions. The philosophic speculations as to the nature of the soul and its relation to the Supreme, called the Adwaita, the Dwaita, and the Visisbta adwaita, are derived mostly from the views of the three great apostles of the Vedantist school, who flourished in Southern India, viz. Sankaracharya
in the ninth century, Ramanuja in the twelfth Century, and Madhavacharya a little later.
Dwaita, the doctrine of duality held by many Hindus, distinguishes two principles in creation, spirit and matter, as opposed to the Adwaita or Monad doctrine, which acknowledges the reality of spiritual existence only. Ananda Tirthachari was the founder of the Dwaita school. Sankara charya was the propagator of the Adwaita doc trines. The Vivishtadwaita school, non-duality with a difference, was founded by Ramanuja charya. It maintains an intermediate doctrine that the universe is a reality depending upon and supported by God, as the body is by the soul ; that the divine and human soul arc in some respects identical ; yet that for all human pur poses they are regarded as distinct, and that, in life, the human soul is subordinate and responsible to the divine soul.