Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c3.s3.t1.91

c3.s3.t1.91

The *Mahānāradakassapa Jātaka*² mentions a king named Aṅgati, who was a righteous ruler of Mithilā. He had a daughter named Rūjā and three ministers, Vijaya, Sunāma and Alata. Once he paid a visit to Guṇa, of the Kassapa family, an ascetic and a great scholar. The king imbibed heretical views from him. His daughter Rūjā tried hard to prove the worthlessness of Guṇa’s doctrines. It was Nārada Kassapa, however, who succeeded in winning him back to the right path. The doctrines preached by this Guṇa Kassapa,³ bear a striking resemblance with those of the famous Purāṇa Kassapa, the elder contemporary of the Buddha. Guṇa is an “annihilator’ (*Ucchedavādi*) and an unbeliever in the results of good or bad actions, that is to say, a believer in the theory of the ‘passivity of the soul’—the Jaina *Akiriyāvāda*. Such is also the philosophy of Purāṇa Kassapa.⁴ If this identification be accepted as correct, and if Aṅgati is proved to be a real historical character, which is not impossible, and to be a contemporary of Guṇa, then he must be placed some where in the earlier part of the 6th century B. C..