History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c11.s4.2

c11.s4.2

In the Jaina text¹ Mahāvīra is represented as declaring to his disciple Indabhūī Goyama the birth and parentage of Gosāla Maṅkhaliputta. His father, according to Mahāvīra, was a *maṅkha* named Maṅkhali, and his mother’s name was Bhaddā.² The word *maṅkha* is interpreted by the commentator Abhayadeva as a type of ascetic “whose hand is kept busy by a picture board”.³ Hoernle declares that “the . . . word . . . has not been found anywhere but in the passage of the *Bhagavatī Sūtra* which adduces it as the source of the name Maṅkhali, and it is presumably an invention *ad hoc*”.⁴ Whatever the meaning of the word, this is certainly not the case. In the standard description of prosperous cities, used throughout the Ardha-māgadhī scriptures, the word *maṅkha* is to be found.⁵ Hemacandra, in his commentary on the *Abhidhāna-cintāmaṇi*, equates it with *māgadha*, a bard.⁶ It is not impossible that the *maṅkha* filled both the functions of an exhibitor of religious pictures, and a singer of religious songs. That such mendicants existed in Ancient India is proved by Viśākhadatta’s *Mudrārākṣasa*, one of the minor characters of which is a spurious religious mendicant described as a “spy with a Yama-cloth” (*yama-paṭena caraḥ*), that is one carrying a picture of the god Yama painted upon a cloth. He habitually enters the houses of his patrons, where he displays his Yama-cloth, and sings songs, presumably of a religious type.⁷