ABSTRACT
By heterodox tradition is meant the tradition that does not accept the testimony of the Vedas. The words heterodoxy and orthodoxy should not be identified with what they mean in Christianity. The heterodox is that which does not accept the Vedas, and the orthodox is that which accepts them. The two main heterodox traditions —Jainism and Buddhism — are atheistic in the sense that they do not accept the reality of God. But they are not heterodox for that reason, but for the reason that they rejected the Vedas. Yet they are spiritual philosophies and are not materialistic. The Cārvāka philosophy also is heterodox, since it also rejected the Vedas. But since Bṛhaspati, the founder of the school, was a great Vedic scholar and the holy priest of the gods, the Cārvāka system, although rejected by the orthodox school, is not regarded by tradition with as great concern as Jainism and Buddhism. The orthodox call the Cārvākas, Jainism, and Buddhism nāstikas (non-existence-theorists), that is, those who say, 'It is nonexistence'. But the 'it' may refer to an eternal sacred scripture, or the ātman, or the Brahman. The Cārvākas and early Buddhism too denied all the three, Jainism denied the first and the last. The Cārvākas denied all objective ethical laws, but the Jainas and the Buddhists affirmed their reality. They accepted the Mīmāmsā position that this world is a world of action; but while the Mīmāmsakas regarded the life of action as the only kind of life worth having, the Jainas and the Buddhists maintained that the life of realization of one's true nature is higher and the highest. Both believed in the doctrine of Karma (action), reincarnation, and the Vedic gods, But they rejected the value of sacrifices, and taught how to transcend the world of action and obtain salvation.
