History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c10.s1.2

c10.s1.2

The six heretics, as portrayed in the Pāli texts, have little individuality. Occasional brief references to an individual teacher may be found, but they are usually referred to as a group.¹ Their character as real human beings is often very tenuous; for instance in the Milinda Pañha they are represented as still surviving centuries after the Buddha's death,² and have become mere lay figures, representative of non-Buddhist heterodoxy. Their teachings are often confused, and the doctrines attributed in a given reference to any one teacher may elsewhere be ascribed to another. Much of the information about the six that is contained in the Buddhist texts, like the references to Gosāla in those of the Jainas, is to be treated very cautiously; for it is evident that the authors had but a limited knowledge of the teachings of the heretics, and what knowledge they had was warped by odium theologicum. Nevertheless these Buddhist and Jaina texts are the only source of our knowledge of the origin of the Ājīvikas, and must be the starting point for any study of the sect.