History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c11.s7.11

c11.s7.11

The strange story of Gosāla and the sesamum plant is possibly the adaptation of an Ājīvika parable connected with a particular point of Gosāla's doctrine. The early Ājīvikas may well have had a favourite simile resembling the story—that just as an uprooted sesamum plant may revive after rain, so a dead body may, given certain favourable conditions, be reanimated. This was certainly part of the Ājīvika creed,¹ and since its technical term, *païṭṭa-parihāra*, is also used here in the story of the sesamum shrub, it would seem that the story and the theory are in some way connected. Thus the Jaina account in the *Bhagavatī Sūtra* may have been devised on the basis of the Ājīvika simile to discredit the latter sect. On the other hand we have no other evidence that the Ājīvikas used such a simile, and the possibility that the story has some basis of fact cannot be excluded.