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An interesting little read…
http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/05/atheistic-materialism-in-ancient-india.html
The Carvakas mocked religious ceremonies, calling them inventions of the Brahmins to ensure their own livelihood. The authors of the Vedas were “buffoons, knaves, and demons.” Those who make ritual offerings of food to the dead, why do they not feed the hungry around them? Like the other two heterodox schools, Jainism and Buddhism, they criticized the caste system and stood opposed to the ritual sacrifice of animals. When the Brahmins defended the latter by claiming that the sacrificed beast goes straight to Swarga Loka (an interim heaven before rebirth), the Carvakas asked why the Brahmans did not kill their aged parents to hasten their arrival in Swarga Loka. “If he who departs from the body goes to another world,” they asked, “how is it that he comes not back again, restless for love of his kindred?” Carvaka thought also appears in the Ramayana. In the epic, Rama is not the god that he later became, but an epic-hero, who, as Sen notes, has “many good qualities and some weaknesses, including a tendency to harbor suspicions about his wife Sita's faithfulness.” In the epic, a pundit named Javali “not only does not treat Rama as God, he calls his actions 'foolish' ('especially for', as Javali puts it, 'an intelligent and wise man')”. Echoing Carvaka doctrine, Javali even asserts that “there is no after-world, nor any religious practice for attaining that … the injunctions about the worship of gods, sacrifice, gifts and penance have been laid down in the [scriptures] by clever people, just to rule over [other] people.”
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