History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c11.s6.51

c11.s6.51

It is significant that four of Gosāla’s adventures are said to have taken place in Vaiṣṇavite temples. Jinadāsa may indeed have been guilty of anachronism in these episodes, for it is by no means certain that temple worship and iconolatry had developed in India in the sixth century B.C. But the gods involved, Vāsudeva and Baladeva, are among the earliest Vaiṣṇavite divinities known to us. Vaiṣṇavite tendencies are to be found in Ājīvika doctrine at a much later date,¹ and Ājīvikas are by one commentator explicitly identified with *ekadaṇḍins*, or Vaiṣṇava ascetics.² The association of Gosāla with Vaiṣṇavite temples and his expulsion from them may conceal an attempt of Jinadāsa to explain away a legend of the later Ājīvikas in which their founder was depicted as breaking away from some more orthodox system. The same may be the case with the story of Gosāla and the *daridda-theras*, with whom he was allowed to remain on sufferance. These suggest the devotees of some Vaiṣṇavite *bhakti* cult, and we have evidence that, like these, the Ājīvikas employed music in their religious practice.³