Vada in Theory and Practice: Studies in Debates, Dialogues and Discussions in Indian Intellectual Discourses c2.9

c2.9

Even though marginalized to a large extent in the textual tradition of philosophical literature and surviving in thin numbers, the *lokāyatas* — materialists — have always remained assertive. Due to their skills in *vāda*, they actually commanded respect and were given prominence in socio-political life. There are epigraphic records to prove that they flourished in Karnataka and continued to practically debate with Vedāntins and other philosophers till fourteenth-fifteenth centuries.³ The Cārvāka philosophy has remained a contentious issue with almost all the philosophical schools for more than two millennia. The modern scholars have vehemently debated on various perspectives of the Cārvākas.⁴ The present work repositions Cārvākas and their postulations in the light of *vāda*s and the *vāda* texts.