History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c11.s2.16

c11.s2.16

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.