Dictionary of Pali Proper Names v2.c31.39

v2.c31.39

**Makkhali-Gosāla.**—One of the six heretical teachers contemporaneous with the Buddha. He held¹ that there is no cause, either ultimate or remote, for the depravity of beings or for their rectitude. The attainment of any given condition or character does not depend either on one’s own acts, nor on the acts of another, nor on human effort. There is no such thing as power or energy or human strength or human vigour. All beings (*sattā*), all lives (*pāṇā*), all existent things (*bhūtā*), all living substances (*jīvā*),² are bent this way and that by their fate, by the necessary conditions of the class to which they belong, by their individual nature; it is according to their position in one or other of the six classes (*abhijāti*) that they experience ease or pain. There are fourteen hundred thousands of principle genera or species (*pamukhayoniya*), again six thousand others and again six hundred. There are five hundred kinds of *kamma*—there are sixty-two paths (or modes of conduct), sixty-two periods, six classes among men, eight stages of a prophet’s existence (*atthapurisabhūmi*),³ forty-nine hundred kinds of occupation, forty-nine hundred Ājīvakas, forty-nine hundred Wanderers (*Paribbājakā*), forty-nine hundred Nāga abodes (or species), two thousand sentient existences (*vīse indriyasate*), three thousand infernal states, thirty-six celestial, mundane or passionate grades (*rajodhātuyo*), seven classes of animate beings (*saññigabbhā*), or beings with the capacity of generating by means of separate sexes, seven of inanimate production (*asaññigabbhā*), seven of production by grafting (*niganthagabbhā*), seven grades of gods, men, devils, great lakes, precipices, dreams. There are eighty-four thousand periods during which both fools and wise alike, wandering in transmigration, shall at last make an end of pain. This cannot be done by virtue, or penance, or righteousness. Ease and pain, measured out as it were with a measure, cannot be altered in the course of transmigration (*saṃsāra*); there can be neither increase nor decrease thereof—both fools and wise alike, wandering in transmigration, exactly for the allotted term, shall then, and then only, make an end of pain.