9 Books Censored or Destroyed for Challenging Religion

2. “Buffoons!” – The Bārhaspatya-sūtras (3rd c. BCE)

Ancient India isn’t the place most people would look for atheism, but it should be. The Indian Cārvāka (3rd c. BCE) was one of the strongest and earliest schools of atheist materialism (3rd c. BCE).

Like many Indian schools of thought,  followers of Cārvāka created small books called sūtras to sum up their perspective in short, pithy sayings. The most important of these, the Bārhaspatya-sūtras, said

• Religion is a human invention
• Death is the end of existence
• Direct experience is the only valid kind of evidence
• Hindu rituals are ignorant and unmanly
• The authors of the sacred Vedas are “buffoons, knaves, and demons”

Except for fragments quoted in other (mostly unfriendly) sources, these sūtras have been lost.