In India there are six orthodox schools of philosophy which recognize the authority of the Vedas as divine revelation, and they generally function as pairs - Nyaya and Vaishesika, Mimamsa and Vedanta, and Samkhya and Yoga. Those who did not recognize this authority were the Jains, Buddhists, and materialists. Even in India where spiritual ideas dominate the culture there were some who were skeptical of those ideals and held to a materialist view of the world; they were called Carvaka, and their doctrine that this world is all that exists is called Lokayata.
The materialists did not believe in an afterlife and found sense perception to be the only source of knowledge, denying the validity of inference or general concepts. They focused on the senses and the four traditional elements of earth, water, fire, and air. Consciousness for the Carvaka is only a modification of these elements in the body. The soul is also identified with the body, and pleasure and pain are the central experiences of life, nature being indifferent to good and evil with virtue and vice being merely social conventions.
This worldly philosophy naturally ignored the goal of liberation (moksha) or simply believed that death as the end of life and consciousness was a liberation. However, they also tended to neglect the value of virtue or justice (dharma), placing all of their attention on the worldly aims of pleasure (kama) and wealth or power (artha).
Although Carvaka ideas are mentioned in some ancient writings, their own ancient writings were lost, and much of what we know of the early materialists is based on criticisms of other schools. However, a famous, ancient drama called The Rise of the Moon of Intellect (Prabodha-candrodaya) reveals some of the beliefs of this worldly movement. In thi ...