Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s9.10

c12.s9.10

Although the origin of these two religious movements goes back to the times of Buddha, nothing precisely is known about their progress before the Maurya period. The word Makkhali which is used as a part of the name of Gosāla, the founder of the Ājivika order, was probably the name of the order. It corresponds to the Sanskrit word Maskarin. Pāṇini in one of his Sūtras (VI, 1, 154) refers to the Maskarin as a class of parivrājakas who carried a bamboo-staff (maskara) in their hands. They were also styled for this reason Ekadaṇḍin. While commenting on the Sūtra, Patañjali in his Mahābhāsya, refers to their fatalistic belief. The Buddhist and Jain texts too ascribe to them a fatalistic creed and say that they held that there is no cause either ultimate or remote, no reward or retribution, no such thing as power or energy and that all ‘are bent this way or that by their fate, by the necessary conditions of the class to which they belong, by their individual nature’ (Sāmaññaphalasutta, Dialogues of Buddha II, p. 71 where all the references to the principal Buddhist and Jaina texts have been collected).