Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v1.c7.s9.t12: Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya
Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v1.c7.s9.t12
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Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya
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Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya (1918~) is an Indian modern philosopher and historian. He was once awarded an honourary doctorate by USSR Academy of Sciences and an academician title by German Democratic Republic Academy of Sciences. After 1959, he has served as an editor for Indian philosophy Quarterly, *Indian Studies: Past and Present*.
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Chattopadhyaya proved the development history of ancient Indian philosophy with the approaches of dialectical materialism and historical materialism, criticised the views hold by European and American scholars that Indian philosophy had been the hometown of idealism and mysticism from ancient times, and also proved that the entire history of Indian philosophy not only included the religious tradition of idealism and mysticism, but also contained a wealth of materialism, rationalism, secularism, optimism and atheism traditions. In *Lokayata: A Study in Ancient Indian Materialism* and *Indian Atheism*, he proved materialistic thinking had emerged in the early Vedic times, the world view held by the ancient Indian ancestors had already reflected the pursuit of material interests and optimistic attitudes towards life. He also discussed in the Indian philosophical traditions, Lokayata was not the only school holding the idea of materialism and atheism, many other schools, like Samkhya, Vaisesika, Mimamsa, Jainadharma and some schools of Buddhism were also bearing materialism and atheism thoughts in varying degrees. In these schools with materialist ideology, besides Lokayata, although some schools were idealistic in view of the world, however they somewhat negated the role of divinity. Chattopadhyaya not only explained the continuity and universality of the development of Indian Materialism tradition, but also illustrated that Indian materialism had launched a long-term, continuous struggle against religious idealism since its generation.
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In dealing with the heritage of Indian philosophy, Chattopadhyaya also put forward his own viewpoints. In *What is Living and What is Dead in Indian Philosophy* he pointed out that philosophical thoughts were ultimately for promoting social progress and development of rationality and science. Inside the heritage of ancient Indian philosophy, the ideas and concepts as long as they could promote today's social progress and development of rationalism and science, were alive and valuable. On the contrary, all the ideas and concepts that would hinder social progress and development of rationalism and science were dead, worthless. Indian ancient philosophy is a huge treasure house with a variety of ideas, these ideas are entangled in a complex, even opposite-to-each-other relationship. They had played different roles in the development of history, thus also had a different meaning in today's social development. In traditional Indian philosophy, there were a lot of ideas and thoughts of obscurantism, mysticism and anti-science, but there were also many ideas and thoughts against these decadent ideas which were helpful for social progress and development of rationalism and science, showing people's pursuit of freedom and equality. Therefore, he appealed to today's Indian philosophical workers they should carry out critical distinction on a variety of traditional philosophical concepts and ideas, must abandon dead concepts and ideas of past philosophy, and vigorously dig and promote those ideas and concepts promoting today's social progress and development of science and democracy.
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Chattopadhyayahasalsomadegreatachievements in the study of comparative philosophy. He believed that the idea of dialectics in Western philosophy was first proposed by the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. This dialectics was built on the basis of materialism; later, Hegel's idealist dialectics replaced the original materialism dialectics. Following that, Marx and Engels set the dialectics free from the illusion of Hegel's idealism, restored its materialistic face and enabled it to rise to a new level. He pointed out that the intellectual movement starting from the beginning of the 19th century CE was "the history of development from metaphysics to the dialectics, and from idealism to materialism". Since then, dialectics had become the most powerful ideological weapon of human, not only for illustrating the history, but also for creating history.
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Chattopadhyaya's thoughts have gained increasing attentions from philosophy circles in China, many of his philosophical works have been translated into Chinese. In 1980, Huang Baosheng and Guo Liangyun translated Chattopadhyaya's *Indian Philosophy* into Chinese. In 1992, Wang Shian translated *Lokayata: A Study in Ancient Indian Materialism* into Chinese. The translation and publication of these two books had deepened Chinese scholars' understanding of ancient Indian philosophy and made Chinese people understand the various materialistic thoughts of ancient India. Chattopadhyaya's main works include: *Lokayata: A Study in Ancient Indian Materialism* (1959), *Indian Philosophy - A Popular Introduction* (1964), *Indian Atheism* (1969), *What is Living and What is Dead in Indian Philosophy* (1976), *Science and Society in Ancient India* (1977) and so on.
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(*Zhu Mingzhong*)