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History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c11.s1: Ājīvika Leaders before Makkhali Gosāla

History and Doctrines of the Ājīvikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c11.s1

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Ājīvika Leaders before Makkhali Gosāla

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According to the *Bhagavatī Sūtra* Makkhali Gosāla considered himself to be the twenty-fourth *tīrthaṅkara* of the current *Avasarpiṇī* age.¹ The passage in which this is stated may indeed be a Jaina interpolation, but numerous other indications are to be found both that ascetics referred to as Ājīvikas existed before their greatest leader, Makkhali Gosāla, and that the Ājīvika order preserved recollections of prophets who preceded him. Both in the Buddhist and Jaina texts names are mentioned which apparently refer to his predecessors.

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¹ *Bh. Sū.* xv, *sū.* 554, fol. 679. V. infra, pp. 64, 68.

Nanda Vaccha and Kisa Saṅkicca

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These names are linked with that of Makkhali Gosāla in a stock phrase which, as we have seen,² occurs in various contexts in the Pāli scriptures.

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² V. supra, pp. 19–20.

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Thus in the *Aṅguttara*³ the *bhikkhu* Ānanda is purported to have declared that the heretical leader Pūraṇa Kassapa believed in the Ājīvika theory of the six classes of men (*chaḷābhijātiyo*); according to his classification the highest class, the most white (*paramasukka*), contained only three members, namely Nanda Vaccha, Kisa Saṅkicca, and Makkhali Gosāla. Buddhaghosa apparently plagiarized this passage for his commentary to the reference to the six classes in the *Sāmañña-phala Sutta*,⁴ and added: "They are the purest of all."⁵

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³ *Aṅg.* iii, p. 383.

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⁴ *Sum. Vil.* i, p. 162.

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⁵ *Te kira sabbehi paṇḍaratarā.*

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In the *Majjhima Nikāya* the same names are given by the *nigaṇṭha* Saccaka or Aggivessana as the leaders of his order.⁶ To this Buddhaghosa comments that the three had achieved leadership over the extreme ascetics.⁷

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⁶ *Majjh.* i, p. 238.

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⁷ *Te kira kiliṭṭhatapānaṃ matthakappattā ahesum.* *Papañca Sūdanī* ii, p. 285.

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Again in the *Sandaka Sutta* of the *Majjhima* the three names occur¹ when the ascetic Sandaka, on his conversion by the Buddha, declares them to be the only great leaders² produced by the Ājīvikas.

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¹ *Majjh.* i, p. 524.

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² *Nīlakaṇṭha* (in *J.R.A.S.*) translation “shining lights” (v. supra, p. 19).

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Hoernle³ suggests that Kisa and Nanda were probably Makkhali’s contemporaries. “There were indeed other groups of ascetics of a similarly dubious character who also bore the name of Ājīvikas . . . but they lived apart under separate leaders, the names of two of whom, Nanda Vaccha and Kisa Saṅkicca, are recorded in the Buddhist scriptures.” That in the days of the Buddha more than one school of ascetics was given the title of Ājīvika seems very probable, but that the two teachers Nanda and Kisa were the contemporaries of Makkhali Gosāla cannot be definitely established. If Nanda Vaccha and Kisa Saṅkicca were altogether independent of Makkhali Gosāla, as Hoernle asserts, it is surprising that the three are so frequently mentioned together, when another teacher, Pūraṇa Kassapa, who was certainly revered with Makkhali by the later Ājīvikas,⁴ is referred to as the leader of a separate school. Despite these objections the view of Hoernle is shared by A. S. Gopani.⁵

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³ *J.R.A.S.* 1894, p. 314; v. infra, pp. 80 ff.

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⁴ *Bhāratīya Vidyā* ii, p. 202.

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⁵ *J.D.L.* ii, p. 2.

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Barua,⁶ on the other hand, believes that Nanda Vaccha and Kisa Saṅkicca represent previous leaders of the Ājīvikas. Nanda, he states categorically, was succeeded by Kisa, and Kisa by Makkhali. He is in this respect guilty of some inconsistency, since he proceeds to interpret the seven reanimations of Gosāla Maṅkhaliputta, as described in the *Bhagavatī Sūtra*,⁷ as “a genealogical succession of seven Ājīvika leaders”, concluding with Gosāla. In maintaining the priority in time of Nanda and Kisa to Makkhali he supports Jacobi, who first put the view forward.⁸

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⁶ *V. infra*, pp. 30 ff.

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⁷ *Introduction to Gaina Sūtras* ii; *SBE.* xlv, p. xxxi.

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Barua’s arguments for elevating Nanda and Kisa to the status of earlier *tīrthaṅkaras* of the Ājīvika order are by no means conclusive. They are based on two *Jātaka* stories in which the chief characters bear names suggesting those of the two hypothetical Ājīvika *arhants*.

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In the first of these, *Sarabhaṅga Jātaka*,¹ the Bodhisatta is born as Sarabhaṅga, also referred to as Jotipāla and Kondañña. He is a famous hermit in the Kavittha forest, on the banks of the Godhāvarī. Among his chief pupils is one Kisa Vaccha, whose name appears to be a telescoped version of those of the two Ājīvika *arhants*. Kisa is said to have left the hermitage with the permission of his teacher, and to have moved to the city of Kumbhavatī, whose king was Daṇḍaki. Here he obtained the reputation of a scapegoat (*kālakanni*), who would remove ill-luck when spat upon, and as a result was shamed and insulted by the populace. After some time he was recalled by his teacher Sarabhaṅga, and the King and his kingdom were destroyed by the gods in punishment for the ignominies borne by the saint. Soon after this Kisa Vaccha is said to have died; innumerable ascetics attended his cremation, and the ceremony was marked by a rain of heavenly flowers.

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¹ *Jāt.* v, pp. 125 ff.

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A second *Jātaka*² tells of the ascetic Saṅkicca, another incarnation of the Bodhisatta. He is the son of the chief brāhmaṇa of Brahmadatta, the semi-legendary and ubiquitous King of Benares, and is represented as converting a regicide prince by a long description of purgatory. Among the inhabitants of the nether world he mentions King Daṇḍaki, who is suffering there on account of his subjects' persecution of the passionless (*araja*) Vaccha Kisa.

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² *Jāt.* v, pp. 261 ff.

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Barua does not value too highly the evidence of the similarity of the names of these two ascetics and those of the Ājīvika leaders. After summarizing the references above quoted he admits that " by no stretch of the imagination can Kisa Vaccha be transformed into Nanda Vaccha . . . . There is no other ground to justify the identification of Kisa Vaccha with Nanda Vaccha or of Saṅkicca with Kisa Saṅkicca than the fact that the views of Sarabhaṅga . . . bear *a priori*, like those of the hermit Saṅkicca, a close resemblance to the ethical teaching of Makkhali Gosāla at whose hands the Ājīvika religion attained a philosophical character ".³

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³ *JDL.* ii, p. 4.

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It is difficult to trace on what Barua bases his last assertion. Sarabhaṅga is an ascetic of the typical *Jātaka* type, with no distinctive ethical views, while the only special characteristic of Saṅkicca is the possession of a lively sense of the reality of the infernal regions, and of the torments experienced there by sinners. There seems no reason to believe that Makkhali Gosāla made the fear of hell a special feature of his doctrine.

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Despite Dr. Barua’s doubts it is perhaps legitimate to conclude that Kisa Vaccha, or Vaccha Kisa, was a hermit, long dead in the Buddha’s day, around whom a body of legend had grown. His fame is made clear by another *Jātaka* reference,¹ wherein he is mentioned as an inhabitant of Brahmaloka, among an exalted company of *ṛṣis*, including such famous sages as Aṅgiras and Kaśyapa. A second ascetic, Saṅkicca, seems to have been connected in the folk memory with Kisa Vaccha. As Barua points out,² Saṅkicca was thought to have been posterior in time to Kisa Vaccha, for in the *Jātaka* reference he is described as mentioning the latter. The two ascetics were perhaps looked upon with reverence by the early Ājīvikas and the Buddhists alike, and the popular floating traditions about them adapted to the needs of the respective sects. In the course of the adaptation the names seem to have been confused.

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¹ *Jāt.* vi, p. 99.

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² *JDL.* ii, p. 3.

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The reference to Kondañña, as the family name of the teacher Sarabhaṅga or Jotipāla, the preceptor of Kisa Vaccha, suggests Udāī Kuṇḍiyāyaṇīya, the first of the strange series of reanimations quoted in the *Bhagavatī Sūtra*.³ Perhaps we have here another garbled version of an Ājīvika tradition going back to one Kauṇḍinya, but the theory rests on such a slender basis that much importance cannot be attached to it.

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³ V. infra, p. 31.

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It seems clear, however, that the Ājīvikas, like the Buddhists and the Jainas, had a tradition of earlier teachers who had spread the true doctrine in the distant past; and, like those of the Buddhists and Jainas, these traditions may have contained a small kernel of historical truth.

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