摘要：Rhys Davids is right. But Rev. Benjamin Clough is to be blamed for misleading Burnouf. Clough, in his notes on the line in the Abhidhānappadīpikā 112: (vitaṇḍasatthaṃ viññeyaṃ yan taṃ) lokāyataṃ (iti), glosses lokāyataṃ as «Fabulous Story» (marginal notes on p. 13). Burnouf did not notice that Clough and Tolfrey (who translated Pali Grammar and Pali Vocabulary in Clough, 1824), had mistaken «Fabulous Story» and elsewhere «Fabulous History» as English equivalents for lokāyataṃ (instead of vitaṇḍasatthaṃ, «science of disputation »), perhaps because ākhyāyika and kathā soon follow in the dictionary (Abhidhānappadīpikā 113ab). What is more to be regretted is that Burnouf, misled by Clough and Tolfrey, in his turn misled Böhtlingk and Roth who in theirSanskrit Wörterbuch gave these two meanings of lokāyata (in Pali): «eine erfundene Geschichte, Roman» (rendered into German from Burnouf’s French version).2 Burnouf proposed (1852: 409) that «les Lokāyatikas de notre Lotus» may suggest «les auteurs ou les lecteurs de pareils ouvrages, dans lequels les passions et les affaires du monde forment le sujet principal». Apparently he had in his mind the wrong meaning given in Clough. Kern steered clear of Clough but called the Lokāyatikas «the Sadducees or Epicureans of India» (1884: 263, note 4; see also 438, note 1), equating them with the Cārvākas who appeared much later. D.D. Shastri (1981: 19) too glosses lokāyata as cārvākaśāstra although Moggalāna mentions nothing of this sort.
