History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c11.s2: The Immediate Predecessors of Makkhali Gosāla

History and Doctrines of the Ājīvikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c11.s2

Language: English

The Immediate Predecessors of Makkhali Gosāla

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In the *Bhagavatī Sūtra*⁴ Gosāla Maṅkhaliputta, as the Ājīvika leader is called by the Jainas, is said to have made a remarkable statement, which perhaps indicates the existence of a line of Ājīvika teachers whose spiritual mantle had fallen upon his shoulders.

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⁴ *Bh. Sū.* xv, *sū.* 550, fol. 674.

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It is stated that Gosāla and Mahāvīra, after the ending of their collaboration in asceticism, were parted for sixteen years, during which the former gained a high reputation for his sanctity, and gathered a large following in the city of Sāvatthi. At the end of this period Mahāvīra visited the city, and denounced his former colleague as a charlatan; whereupon Gosāla, surrounded by his followers, proceeded to the *caitya* where Mahāvīra was staying, and angrily declared that he was not the Gosāla who had been Mahāvīra’s associate, but that the original Gosāla was dead, and that the soul now inhabiting the apparent Gosāla was that of Udāī Kuṇḍiyāyaṇīya, which had passed through seven bodies in succession, finally taking up its abode in that of the dead Gosāla, which it had reanimated. He declared further that his soul had travelled through all the eighty-four lakhs of great *kalpas*, which must necessarily elapse before it could end its journey, and had occupied all forms of body in determined order. It had attained its final birth as Udāī, an auspicious and beautiful infant; at an early age Udāī had become an ascetic; and the soul nearing perfection had passed from one body to another as the soul which had been the original occupant of that body had been separated from it by death.

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These reanimations Gosāla endowed with the technical title of *paüṭṭa-parihāra* (abandonments of transmigration), and declared that such a series of reanimations was the fated lot of every soul in the final stages of its rigidly determined passage through *saṃsāra*. At the moment, however, we are not concerned with reanimation as a point of doctrine, but with its significance historically. The *Sūtra* quotes with remarkable circumstantial detail the names of the previous occupants of the seven bodies inhabited in turn by the soul of Udāī, together with the length of time during which they were thus inhabited, and the place at which the soul transferred itself from one body to another. According to the text the soul of Udāī passed from body to body as follows:—

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(1) Eṇejjaga (Skt. Ṛṇañjaya), outside Rāyagiha, at the Maṇḍiyakucchi *caitya*; the soul remained incarnate in Eṇejjaga’s body for twenty-two years.

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(2) Mallarāma, at the Candoyaraṇa caitya outside Uddaṇḍapura, for twenty-one years.

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(3) Maṇḍiya, at the Aṅgamaṇḍira caitya outside Campā, for twenty years.

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(4) Roha, at the Kāmamahāvaṇa caitya outside Vāṇārasī, for nineteen years.

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(5) Bhāraddāi, at the Pattakālagaya caitya outside Ālabhiyā, for eighteen years.

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(6) Ajjuṇa Goyamaputta, at the Koṇḍiyāyaṇa caitya outside Vesālī, for seventeen years.

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(7) Gosāla Maṅkhaliputta, at Hālāhalā’s pottery at Sāvatthī, for sixteen years.

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This fantastic catalogue has been interpreted by Hoernle ¹ as an effort on the part of Gosāla to live down his past connection with Mahāvīra. For Barua “the only legitimate inference to be drawn . . .” is that “in this . . . enumeration . . . there is preserved a genealogical succession of seven Ājīvika leaders, together with a list of . . . successive geographical centres of their activities . . . ” ²

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¹ ERE. i, p. 263.

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² JDL. ii, p. 5.

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It is not easy to accept Barua’s theory without question. If the list is actually that of a succession of ascetic teachers, leaders of the same order, it is surprising that each one makes his headquarters in a different town. The progressive diminution by one year of the period of each reanimation also gives strong ground for suspicion that the scheme is artificial. Even if we admit that the list may represent a succession of seven teachers (or eight, if Udāī, the originator of the process, be included), little reliance may be placed on the total of 117 years between the commencement of the ministry of Eṇejjaga and that of Gosāla.

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Two disorderly features of the list suggest, however, that it is not wholly a monkish fiction. The immediate predecessor of Gosāla, Ajjuṇa Goyamaputta, is distinguished by a gotra name or patronymic, as is Udāī Kuṇḍiyāyaṇīya, in whose body the migrant soul was originally born; but the other five names are given without patronymics. This fact suggests that Ajjuṇa was a real person, the period of whose life overlapped with that of Gosāla, and whose name was well known to his contemporaries. The others, on the other hand, seem to have been earlier and more shadowy figures, whose family names had been forgotten. The fame of the original Udāī, the first of the line, may have been such that his *gotra* name survived over several generations. Had the list been completely artificial it might be expected that all the names would have received *gotra* titles.

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The six predecessors of Gosāla are reported to have lived and taught at named *caityas* outside various cities of the Ganges basin. Gosāla, on the other hand, made his headquarters in the workshop of a potter woman. Had the list been a mere fiction, invented by an Ājīvika theologian to add dignity to his master's life-story, the residences of the six earlier reanimations would surely have been of the same type as that of the last. Consistency might also have been expected if the list had been the slanderous creation of a Jaina author.

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These two marked inconsistencies in the list point in favour of its reliability. The names are probably those of a succession of teachers from whom Gosāla obtained some elements of his doctrine. Less reliance can be placed on the names of the *caityas* and cities, which change with an automatic regularity and never repeat themselves. The periods given for the successive ministeries of the seven teachers seem certainly false, with the exception of the sixteen years attributed to Gosāla. This may represent an accurate tradition, on the basis of which the ministeries of his six predecessors were arrived at by the mechanical addition of one year each.

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References in Buddhist or Hindu texts to confirm the historicity of these names are not to be found. Numerous seers and teachers of the Bhāradvāja *gotra* are referred to in the Pāli and later Vedic texts, but there is no reason to believe that the Bhāraddāī of the *Bhagavatī Sūtra* represents any one of them. Ālabhiyā, the city near which he is said to have resided, is not mentioned in Sanskrit literature, but is thought by Hoernle¹ to be identical with the town of Ālavi mentioned in the Pāli scriptures, and identified by Cunningham with the modern Newal, nineteen miles south-east of Kanauj. For the names prior to that of Bhāraddāī no counterparts can be found, but a possible connection with Gosāla’s immediate predecessor, Ajjuṇa Goyamaputta, occurs in the *Lalitavistara*.¹ Here the preceptor of the future Buddha during his youth at Kapilavastu is Arjuna, a great master of mathematics. As a Śākyan this teacher would belong to the Gautama *gotra*,² and his generation, according to the Buddhist tradition, was that immediately preceding the Buddha’s, and therefore also that of Makkhali Gosāla. An interest in number and a tendency to classify numerically is clearly to be found in Gosāla’s teaching as described in the *Sāmañña-phala Sutta* and in the *Bhagavatī Sūtra*. It is not intrinsically impossible that the Śākyan mathematician became in his later life a wandering ascetic, teaching in the neighbourhood of Vesālī, where he came in contact with the young Gosāla, and strongly influenced his views.

Linked texts (2)

Sāmaññaphalasutta — Pāli
Viyāhapannatti — Sudharman, Ardhamāgadhī Prakrit