Kumārila’s attacks certainly target the belief in supernatural beings who should be able to grant boons to human beings (the devatās), insofar as they show that this belief is inherently self-contradictory. For instance, these deities should be the actual recipients of ritual offerings. However, how could they receive offerings at the same time from different sacrificers in different places?
Kumārila also targets the belief in a Lord akin to the one defended by rational theology, both in Europe and in South Asia, again because this leads to contradictions. Kumārila explains that there is no need of such a Lord in order to explain the creation of the world, since there is no need to adduce further evidence in order to justify the world as it is now (i.e., existing), whereas one would need to adduce a strong external evidence to justify everything contradicting the world as we know it. Therefore, the continuous presence of the world becomes the default status and the theist has the burden of the proof and needs to be able to establish independently of his religious belief that there has been a time when the world did not exist. Similarly, Kumārila shows that the idea of a Lord who is at the same time all-mighty and benevolent is self-contradictory, since if the Lord where really all-might, he would avoid evil, and if he tolerates it, then he is cruel. If one says that evil is due to karman or other causes, Kumārila continues, then this shows that there is no need to add the Lord at all as a further cause and that everything can be explained just on the basis of karman or any other cause.
Are Kumārila’s criticisms also targeted at the idea of an impersonal and non-dual brahman? Kumārila does not explicitly address the issue of the possible distinction between one and the other target. However, a few scant hints may help readers. In a fragment from his lost Bṛhaṭṭīkā preserved in the work of a Buddhist opponent (the Tattvasaṅgraha), Kumārila speaks of deities as being vedadeha, i.e., ‘embodied in the Veda’ (so Yoshimizu 2008, fn. 78). In a verse of the TV, he says that they are ṛgvedādisamūheṣu […] pratiṣṭhitāḥ, i.e., ‘who reside in the Ṛgveda and all other [Vedic scriptures]’ (Yoshimizu 2007b, p. 221). Does this mean that Kumārila was accepting a conception of deities inhabiting the Vedas? I discussed the idea with a colleague who just said that the verses must be interpolated.
What do readers think? Was there local atheism in ancient India?
See also Yoshimizu’s comment to my post on Bhavanātha.
Jason Schwartz remarked as follows:
“How is the Bṛhatṭīkā passage cited above any different from Śabara’s claim (which I take to be his Siddhānta) that the gods are merely and only words found in the Veda–essentially indexical referents used to organize the knowledge contained therein?”
Dear Jason (via Sudipta),
I might be wrong, but the use of pratiṣṭhita seems to point to the fact that deities are considered as superintending the Vedas. The parallel with vedadeha further suggests a close relationship with the Vedas which is more than the fact of just being a word mentioned in the Veda.
Short answer: Yes.
Thank you, Salil. But any further comment would be welcome.
For starters, Lokayat has been and remains the mainstream of Indian philosophy. Even the name, Lokayat explicitly means “philosophy of the people”. This is the default philosophy of the Indian people. Going back in time to the RV, the Nasadiya Sukta clearly pulls the rug out from under the “god of the gaps” argument. It explicitly states that the gods (devas, the shining ones) came after the creation. So here, the creator(s) is/are removed from the status of “first cause”. The Nasadiya Sukta ends with the honest skeptical stance and leaves the question of creation completely open.