Dictionary of Pali Proper Names v2.c31.43

v2.c31.43

Makkhali's views as given in the Buddhist books are difficult to understand, the Commentators themselves finding it a hopeless task. He seems to have believed in infinite gradations of existence; in his view, each individual thing has eternal existence, if not individually, at least in type. He evidently had definite conceptions of numerous grades of beings, celestial, infernal and mundane, as also of the infinity of time and the recurrent cycles of existence. He seems to have conceived the world as a system in which everything has a place and a function assigned to it, a system in which chance has no place and which admits of no other cause whatever, of the depravity or purity of beings, but that which is implied in the word Fate or Destiny (*niyati*). All types of things and all species of beings, however, are individually capable of transformation, that is of elevation or degradation in type. His theory of purification through transmigration (*saṃsārasuddhi*) probably meant perfection through transformation (*pariṇatā*)—transformation which implies not only the process of constant change, but also a fixed orderly mode of progression and retrogression. All things must, in course of time, attain perfection.⁴ Makkhali's followers are known as the Ājīvakas (*q.v.*).