The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c18.35

v1.c18.35

It was during one of these visits to Nālandā, a suburb of Rājagṛiha famous in the sacred history of the Buddhists, that he met with Gosāla Maṁkhaliputta, a mendicant friar, who attached himself to Mahāvīra for some years. The consequences of this meeting were certainly disastrous for both the teacher and the disciple. For six years they lived together practising the most austere asceticism; but after that time, on account of a dispute which arose out of a mere trifle, Gosāla separated himself from Mahāvīra, and set up a religious system of his own, soon afterwards proclaiming that he had attained to the highest stage of saintship, that of a *tīrthakara*. This claim was put forth two years before Mahāvīra himself had reached his perfect enlightenment. The doctrines and views of Gosāla are known to us only from notices scattered throughout the Jain and Buddhist writings, and his followers, the Ājīvika sect, have left no written documents; but from the intolerant and bitter sayings of the Jains concerning Gosāla, whom they stigmatise as merely a treacherous impostor, we may well conclude that the cause of dissension between him and his former teacher was deep-rooted, and that this quarrel must have been a severe blow to the rising influence of Mahāvīra and the establishment of the new religious community. Gosāla took up his head-quarters in a potter's shop belonging to a woman named Hālāhalā at Çrāvastī, and seems to have gained considerable reputation in that town. We shall hear something about him at a later stage; but for the present we must return to Mahāvīra himself.