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1. Having seen debates about the astika/nastika classification and the possibility of a “Hindu Atheist”, I thought I would write my understanding of these concepts to shed some light on the ongoing debate. For this, I’m relying on Nicholson’s Unifying Hinduism
2. I’m going to historicise the classification of different philosophical systems in pre-medieval and medieval India and point out how a certain shift, which has happened during the end of the 16th century, made astika/nastika distinction more popular as well as more confusing.
3. First thing first, there was no single uniform understanding of the meaning of the astika/nastika distinction or a universally agreed-on list of the astika and nastika schools until the late medieval period. To translate them as “theist” and “atheist” is misleading
4. Two pertinent questions regarding this debate
1. How is it that a school qualifies as astika?
2. What essential property must it have to avoid falling into nastikatva?
Let us answer these questions by understanding the etymology of these two words.
1. How is it that a school qualifies as astika?
2. What essential property must it have to avoid falling into nastikatva?
Let us answer these questions by understanding the etymology of these two words.
5. The etymology of these terms is important: the astika is someone who says that “there is” (asti), while the nastika says “there is not” (nasti).
So the central question, then, is what precisely is being affirmed or denied here?
So the central question, then, is what precisely is being affirmed or denied here?
6. To justify this usage, some of the modern introductory texts on Indian philosophy generally cite Manu-“Any twice-born who disregards these two roots [sruti and smrti ] on the basis of the science of logic should be excluded by the righteous as a nastika, a reviler of the Veda.
7. What is it to mean belittle the Vedas on the basis of the science of logic? Does this definition imply that those who follow the injunctions of the Vedas are being illogical? In what sense, one should understand the term the science of logic here?
8. Medhātithi, a 9th-century commentator, understands the “science of logic” just to refer to the works on logic written by nastikas, namely the works of the Buddhists, Carvakas, and so forth, in which it is proclaimed again and again that the Veda is contrary to “dharma”.
9. For Medhatithi, a nastika is someone who refuses to participate in Vedic rituals because he sees them as pointless or even immoral. It is important to note that “the reviler of the Veda” is not someone who says dat the Veda is untrue, but someone who says dat d Veda is immoral
10. At this period, there are usually three claims that are associated with the nastika position. Commenting on Manu 8.309, Medhatiti writes that “a nastika is one who says, ‘there is no other world; there is no [purpose in] gift-giving; there is no [purpose in] sacrificing.”
11. All these three claims are related to ritual action. So the meaning of nastika, at this stage, is something to do with the orthopraxy i.e. correct ritual performance. Acceptance or rejection of the authority of Veda as pramana is little significance here.
12. The Jaina doxographer Haribhadra and his commentator Manibhadra also defined astika/nastika in their own way. Interestingly, Haribhadra’s understanding of these terms also echoes Medhatithi’s orthopraxy sense of “reviler of the Veda”.
13. Manibhadra understands astika view as those that affirm the existence of another world ( paraloka), transmigration ( gati), virtue ( punya), and vice ( papa). For both Haribhadra and Manibhadra, these two designations have to do with ritual/ethical action (karman).
14. Compare Manibhadra’s understanding with that of Medhathiti notion of astika/nastika definition. Both of them define astika/nastika as someone who affirms/denies certain things that are related to ritualistic or ethical actions.
15. The significance in belief in “other worlds” ( paraloka) is in the context of ritual/ethical action: other worlds are important because only by recognizing the existence of other worlds can we acknowledge that actions in this life have future consequences.
16. Astika/nastika agree that some actions lead to merit and that others result in a demerit. Differences arise when each school begins to categorize various actions according to their karmic results.
17. Grammarians also defined these terms. At Astadhyayi 4.4.60., Panini simply provides the derivation of the two words (along with a third, daistika ) without suggesting what exactly is being accepted by the āstika or rejected by the nāstika.
18. First substantive definition of the 2 words in the Paninian tradition comes in the Kasikavrtti,a commentary by the 7th-century authors Jayaditya and Vamana. They write, “The astika is the one who believes that ‘there exists another world.’ The opposite of him is the nastika.”
19. The above definition has obvious similarities to Manibhadra’s and Medhatithi’s interpretations since both include the existence of another world (paraloka) as one of the affirmations of the astika.
20. But it omits the belief in the efficacy of ritual action found in Medhatithi, as well as the belief in merit and demerit found in both Manibhadra and Medhatithi.
21. For Sanskrit grammarians in the 7th-17th centuries, an astika is simply one who believes in a life hereafter, and a nastika is one who does not. While the existence of a life hereafter usually implies the existence of an ethical system rewarding virtue and punishing vice.
22. Interestingly the Jainas Manibhadra and Haribhadra consider themselves as representatives of an astika philosophy and apply the term nastika exclusively to the materialist Lokayata school. This is the same case with that of Buddhists as stated in their text Bodhisattvabhumi.
23. The pre-10th century history of the word astika/nastika shows some sort of continuity among commentators in the Jaina, Buddhist, and dharmasatric traditions. These thinkers generally agree that the distinction between astika and nastika is primarily ethical and not doctrinal.
24. But this picture has changed in the late medieval period. The earlier meaning of nastika, the reviler of the Veda, was primarily an issue of orthopraxy(correct ritual performance) instead of orthodoxy (correct opinion). Over time, however, the second issue displaced the first
25. This shift coincided with the gradual rise of the Vedanta school. We see evidence of the lack of general acknowledgement of a school known as “Vedanta” in the Jaina Saddarsanasamuccaya and the Buddhist Manimekalai.
26. This corroborates Hajime Nakamura’s observations that before the 10th century, Vedanta was rarely acknowledged by Jainas, Buddhists, and other Brahmanical schools.
27. In the late medieval period, the Vedantic understanding of the Veda as imparting information about ultimate truths became the primary model for scriptural interpretation. By this period, the word nastika was understood in terms of orthodoxy rather than orthopraxy.
28. Hence, the dominant meaning of the term “a reviler of the Veda” has become someone who denied that the Vedas’ depiction of ultimate reality and it has lost its pre-10th century meaning altogether.
29. For late medieval Vedantins (This includes Vijnanabikshu and Madhusudana Saraswati), the word astika denotes schools that nowadays are often described as “Hindu,” and the nāstikas correspond to the non-Hindu schools of the Jainas, Buddhists, and materialists.
30. Nicholas claims that the two words most commonly used to translate astika/nastika, “orthodox” and “heterodox,” come out of the Christian theological tradition and hence carry historical connotations that distort the understanding of native Indian categories of thought.
31. He also claims that no single English word can do justice to the richness and complexity of the Sanskrit terms astika and nastika. This is not to say that the two terms must remain untranslated. Any candidate must retain the inherent ambiguity in the two terms.
32. The astika says “there is” and the nāstika says “there is not,” so the object of affirmation or negation is unclear. It could be the efficacy of ritual/ethical action, as in Medhatithi’s earlier gloss, or simply the epistemic authority of the Veda as understood in premedieval
33. Nicholas rightly claims the terms “affirmer” and “denier” are better words since these are neutral with regard to the question of right opinion versus right practice. Hence he proposes to translate astika as an affirmer and nastika as a denier.
34. An affirmer(astika) might be one who“affirms the value of ritual”(Medhatithi),1 who“affirms the existence of virtue and vice”(Manibhadra), 1 who “affirms the existence of another world after death”(the grammarians),or one who“affirms the Vedas as the source of ultimate truth”
35. And nastika is the negation of the position held by the affirmer. Though there are problems with the translations, the typical translations for the terms astika and nastika, “orthodox” and “heterodox,” succeed to a certain extent in expressing these rich Sanskrit terms.
