History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c12.s7.3

c12.s7.3

Of these forms the Pāli seems the best. Although the word maṅkha, which Hoernle believed to be a nonce-word, does exist outside the *Bhagavatī Sūtra*,² and even although Gosāla’s father may have been a religious mendicant called by that term,³ the nasal which has found its way into the Jaina form Maṅkhaliputta seems anomalous, and cannot well be the linguistic ancestor of the ṛ in the Tamil form Maṛkali. That this element of the name is a patronymic, as is implied by the Jaina form, is improbable, since it is refuted by the joint testimony of Pāli and Tamil sources. The *Mahāvastu’s* metronymic forms, Gośālī- and Gośalīkā-putra, are nowhere confirmed by Pāli sources, but are if anything disproved by the dubious Jaina statement that the name of Gosāla’s mother was Bhaddā.⁴ It is probable that the personal name of the teacher was Gosāla, and that Makkhali, or Maskarin, a fairly common appellation of a staff-bearing ascetic, was rather a title than a proper name.