“Live well, as long as you live. Live well even by borrowings, for, once cremated, there is no ‘return.” This rejection of after-life in an aphorism of the

The aphorism advocates enjoying life now because there is no return after cremation, which directly reflects the Lokayata/Carvaka materialist denial of an afterlife. Book evidence describes the Lokayatas as a materialist tradition asserting that the dead “do not survive after death,” linking them to doctrines that reject posthumous existence and religious promises of life after death [1]. Secondary sources record the same sentiment and quote lines nearly identical to the aphorism — e.g., “While life is yours, live joyously…Once this form of ours has been burnt in the pyre, how shall it e’er again return?” — explicitly attributing this outlook to the Charvaka/Lokayata school. Thus option 4 is correct.

Sources

1. [1] THEMES IN INDIAN HISTORY PART I, History CLASS XII (NCERT 2025 ed.) > Chapter 4: Thinkers, Beliefs and Buildings > Fatalists and materialists? > p. 87