kama

Set against the standard four aims of life, the purusharthas, the Charvaka keeps the worldly ones, artha and kama , and is skeptical of moksha as a goal built on a fiction.

Hindu thought also files dharma as one of the four legitimate aims of human life, the purusharthas : dharma (righteousness), artha (wealth and means), kama (pleasure and desire), and moksha (liberation).

It is worshipped as Kamakhya , "she who is called Desire," a name tied to kama , desire or love.

Three of the four belong to life in the world, and the tradition grouped them together as the trivarga , the "group of three": dharma , artha , and kama .

The fuller scholarly picture comes from the historian Kama Maclean, whose study Pilgrimage and Power: The Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, 1765-1954 (2008) traces how the modern mega-festival took shape.

It is the eye of fire, the eye that Shiva opened once to burn the love-god Kama, desire itself, to a heap of ash when Kama tried to break his meditation.

…f maya ; shrim , to Lakshmi and to abundance; klim , to desire and to Kama; aim , to Sarasvati and to speech.

Charaka binds the whole enterprise to the four aims of a human life, calling health the supreme root of dharma, artha, kama and moksha.