The author of the Dabistan, who lived in the seventeenth century, also
mentions the Carvakas in somewhat similar terms.[793]

Brahmanical authors often couple the Carvakas and Buddhists. This
lumping together of offensively heretical sects may be merely
theological animus, but still it is possible that there may be a
connection between the Carvakas and the extreme forms of Mahayanist
nihilism. Schrader[794] in analysing a singular work, called the
Svasamvedyopanishad, says it is "inspired by the Mahayanist doctrine
of vacuity (_sunya-vada_) and proclaims a most radical agnosticism by
asserting in four chapters (_a_) that there is no reincarnation
(existence being bubble-like), no God, no world: that all traditional
literature (_Sruti_ and _Smriti_) is the work of conceited fools;
(_b_) that Time the destroyer and Nature the originator are the
rulers of all existence and not good and bad deeds, and that there is
neither hell nor heaven; (_c_) that people deluded by flowery speech
cling to gods, sacred places, teachers, though there is in reality no
difference at all between Vishnu and a dog; (_d_) that though all
words are untrue and all ideas mere illusions, yet liberation is
possible by a thorough realization of _Bhavadvaita_." But for this
rather sudden concession to Hindu sentiment, namely that deliverance
is possible, this doctrine resembles the tenets attributed to the
Carvakas.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 736: In the Sarva-darsana-sangraha, the best known
compendium of Indian philosophy.]

[Footnote 737: J.C. Chatterji's definition of Indian philosophy (in
his _Indian Realism_, p. 1) is interesting. "By Hindu philosophy I
mean that branch of the ancient learning of the Hindus which
demonstrates by reasoning propositions with regard to (_a_) what a man
ought to do in order to gain true happiness ... or (_b_) what he ought
to realize by direct experience in order to be radically and
absolutely freed from suffering and to be absolutely independent, such
propositions being already given and lines of reasoning in their
support being established by duly qualified authorities."]

[Footnote 738: See Chatterji's work above cited.]

[Footnote 739: It is this idea which disposes educated Hindus to
believe in the magical or sacramental power of mystic syllables and
letters, though the use of such spells seems to Europeans incredible
folly.]

[Footnote 740: See especially Garbe, _Die Sankhya Philosophie_, 1894;
and Keit