History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c10.s1.1

c10.s1.1

Throughout the Pāli canon the teaching of the Buddha and the activities and discipline of his Order are contrasted with the doctrines and practices of six other teachers and their followers, who are represented as the Buddha's contemporaries, and were doubtless, like the Buddha himself, inspired by the wave of dissatisfaction with the system of orthodox Brāhmaṇism, which seems to have swept over the Ganges valley in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.