History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c11.s6.42

c11.s6.42

In another time and place Jinadāsa’s terse Prākrit narrative would have been expanded by its author into a picaresque novel. In it Gosāla fills rather the rôle of a Sancho Panza than that of a Judas, for his misfortunes, while in part due to his loyalty to his master, and in part to his arrogance, are mainly the result of a lewd and surly clownishness, which can scarcely have been a significant element in the character of the founder of an important religious sect. The story as it stands is evidently fiction.