History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c11.s2.3

c11.s2.3

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.