Ajñana in the context of "Charvaka"

In Indian religions and philosophies, a śramaṇa (from Sanskrit) or samaṇa (from Pali), sometimes anglicised as shramana, is a person "who labours, toils, or exerts themselves for some higher or religious purpose" or a "seeker, or ascetic, one who performs acts of austerity".

In the early Vedic texts, the term is an epithet for the great rishi sages in association with their ritualistic exertion. However, it has since come to refer to a broad class of spiritual movements originally comprising wandering ascetics from ancient India—collectively called the Śramaṇa tradition, Shramanic tradition, or occasionally Shramanism—historically parallel to but distinct from the Vedic religion, Brahmanism, and their Hindu successor movements. The Śramaṇa tradition includes Jainism, Buddhism, and others such as the Ājīvika, Ajñana, and Cārvāka, while definitively excluding Hinduism. The tradition's name comes from the semantic narrowing of the term śramaṇa to mean a religious individual who specifically rejects the authority of the Vedas; however, the word did not hold this connotation until certain post-Vedic texts considered canonical by Buddhists and Jains. Similarly, in Indian philosophy, the terms āstika versus nāstika largely equate to this distinction between Vedic versus non-Vedic belief systems.

Indian philosophy, the systems of thought and reflection that were developed by the civilizations of the Indian subcontinent. They include both orthodox (astika) systems, namely, the Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Samkhya, Yoga, Purva-Mimamsa (or Mimamsa), and Vedanta (Advaita, Dwaita, Bhedbheda, Vishistadvaita), and unorthodox (nastika) systems, such as Buddhism, Jainism, Ajivika, Ajnana, Charvaka etc. as well as other schools such as Raseswera, Paninya, Pratyabhijna, Pasupata Shaivism, Shaivism etc. Indian thought has been concerned with various philosophical problems, significant among which are the nature of the world (cosmology), the nature of reality (metaphysics), logic, the nature of knowledge (epistemology), ethics, and the philosophy of religion etc. Some of the most famous and influential philosophers of all time were from the Indian Subcontinent such as Buddha, Nagarjuna, Adi Sankara, etc. This list is until 14th century CE.

Sañjaya Belatthiputra (Pali: Sañjaya Belaṭṭhiputta; Sanskrit: Sañjaya Vairatiputra; literally, "Sañjaya of the Belattha clan"), was an Indian ascetic philosopher who lived around the 7th-6th century BC in the region of Magadha. He was contemporaneous with Mahavira, Makkhali Gosala, Ajita Kesakambali and the Buddha, and was a proponent of the ajñana school of thought.

Charvaka (Sanskrit: चार्वाक; IAST: Cārvāka), also known as Lokāyata, is an ancient Indian school of materialism. It is an example of the atheistic schools in the Ancient Indian philosophies. Charvaka holds direct perception, empiricism, and conditional inference as proper sources of knowledge, embraces philosophical skepticism, and rejects ritualism. In other words, the Charvaka epistemology states that whenever one infers a truth from a set of observations or truths, one must acknowledge doubt; inferred knowledge is conditional.

It was a well-attested belief system in ancient India. Brihaspati, a philosopher, is traditionally referred to as the founder of Charvaka or Lokāyata philosophy, although some scholars dispute this. Charvaka developed during the Hindu reformation period in the first millennium BCE and is considered a philosophical predecessor to subsequent or contemporaneous heterodox philosophies such as Ajñāna, Ājīvika, Jainism, and Buddhism. Its teachings have been compiled from historic secondary literature such as those found in the shastras, sutras, and Indian epic poetry.