Within the traditional accounts of Indian philosophy, the origins of the Charvaka, or Lokayata, school are traced back to a somewhat shadowy figure named Brihaspati. Later doxographical works speak of him as the founding teacher and even attribute to him a lost foundational text, the “Brihaspati Sutra.” This attribution, however, is generally understood as more legendary than historical, a way of giving a concrete face to a current of thought that left few direct textual traces of its own. In some narratives, the very name “Charvaka” itself is treated as if it were that of an individual teacher, yet this is better seen as an eponym or symbolic designation than as a firmly identifiable historical person.

Because the school’s own writings have not survived, what is known of its proponents comes largely through the often-hostile testimony of rival traditions. These sources preserve the memory of Brihaspati as the paradigmatic voice of materialist skepticism, but they do not yield a clear, continuous lineage of named teachers in the way that some other Indian schools provide. As a result, no securely identifiable historical individual can be singled out as the founder in a strict biographical sense. The figure of Brihaspati thus functions more as a focal symbol for a radical, this-worldly outlook than as a reliably documented philosopher whose life and works can be reconstructed in detail.

Seen in this light, the question of “who founded” Charvaka opens onto a deeper reflection about how heterodox traditions are remembered. The school that denied metaphysical certainties and an afterlife is itself known largely through the voices of its opponents, and its supposed founder stands at the threshold between myth and history. What remains clear, despite these uncertainties, is that later Indian thinkers consistently looked back to Brihaspati—and to the name Charvaka—as emblematic of the materialist challenge within the broader spiritual and philosophical landscape.