A History of Indian Literature v2.c20.s2.77

v2.c20.s2.77

The legendary portion of the work also gives an account of the predecessors of Mahāvīra, and of pious ascetics who attained great divine dignity through their severe castigations. Considerable space is also devoted to the descriptions of the heavenly worlds of the gods, which are granted as a reward to the pious, and the hells with their torments, to which the wicked are doomed. Among the legends, those dealing with the predecessors and contemporaries of Mahāvīra are specially important, namely those of the disciples of Pārśva and of Jāmāli and Gosāla Makkhaliputta, the founders of sects, to which Book XV of the Bhagavatī is devoted. This section is a good example of the way in which one sect presents the life of the founder of a hostile sect. The nucleus of history in the background of this presentation, appears to be the fact that the two hostile sects, the Nigaṇṭhas, *i.e.*, the adherents of Pārśva and Mahāvīra, and the Ājīvikas, *i.e.*, the adherents of Gosāla, were originally very closely connected, before they came to a parting of the ways.² It would seem that this Book XV of the Bhagavatī was originally an independent text, and indeed the whole of the fifth Aṅga has the appearance of a mosaic, into which various texts were inserted little by little.