History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c13.s2: The Death of Pūraṇa
History and Doctrines of the Ājīvikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c13.s2
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The Death of Pūraṇa
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While our knowledge of the events of Pūraṇa’s life is negligible, we have an account of his death which contains interesting features, and, existing as it does in more than one version, may have a basis of truth. The sources agree that Pūraṇa died by his own hand. The Buddhist accounts add that his death took place at Sāvatthi, after a great miracle contest in which he and his fellow heretics were worsted by the Buddha. The event was a popular subject for illustration by Buddhist sculptors and artists.⁵
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⁵ Foucher, *L’Art Gréco-Bouddhique* . . ., vol. i, pp. 534–7.
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The description of Pūraṇa’s suicide is contained in the commentary to the *Dhammapada*,¹ and in the *Divyâvadāna*.² A Tibetan version of the story also exists.³ The first version differs from the two latter in several particulars, and is considerably briefer. In the Pāli version an unnamed *seṭṭhi* of Rājagaha is said to have suspended a bowl by a cord sixty feet in the air, and to have invited holy-men of all sects to fly up and bring it down, offering to become the disciple of the successful competitor. On six successive days the six heretics tried to persuade the *seṭṭhi* to give them the bowl, but refused to put their magic powers to the test. On the seventh day the bowl was retrieved by the *bhikkhu* Piṇḍola Bhāradvāja, who gave a remarkable display of levitation. On hearing the news of his disciple’s feat the Buddha reproached him, and forbade the repetition of such miraculous displays.
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¹ *Dh. A.* iii. 199 ff.
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² *Divy.* 143 ff.
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³ Rockhill, *The Life of the Buddha*, p. 80.
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The heretics were delighted at the news, thinking that the cessation of Buddhist miracles would leave them masters of the field. But their hopes were dashed when they heard that the Buddha had told King Bimbisāra that his injunction was binding on the *bhikkhus* only, and not on himself, and that if the heretics attempted to display their powers he too would perform a miracle. He further declared that in four months’ time he would give such a performance at Sāvatthi. The heretics decided to pursue him unremittingly, in the hope of shaking his equanimity and thus weakening his magic powers. They followed him to Sāvatthi, and there obtained from their disciples one hundred thousand pieces of money, with which they erected a pavilion. King Pasenadi offered to have a similar pavilion erected for the Buddha, but he refused, stating that he had a pavilion-builder, and would perform his miracle under the mango tree of Gaṇḍa, the King’s gardener. The heretics, hearing of his promise, uprooted all the mango trees for a league around.
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On the full moon of the month Āsāḷhi the Buddha was presented with a mango fruit by Gaṇḍa. He told the latter to dig a hole and plant the mango stone. No sooner had the Buddha washed his hand over the spot where the stone was planted than a tree sprang up, fifty cubits high and covered with flowers and fruit. The populace, realizing the evil stratagems of the six heretics, began to pelt them with mango stones.
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The god Sakka then took a hand in the contest. He ordered the wind to uproot the heretics' pavilion, the sun to scorch their naked bodies, and the wind to cover them with dust and to cause countless drops of rain to fall on them. Looking like mottled cows (*kabara-gāvi-sadisā*) they fled in all directions.
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Meanwhile a peasant who was a devotee of Pūraṇa Kassapa had unyoked his oxen, and, taking a vessel of gruel and a cord, had set out for Sāvatthi, intending to watch the miracle-contest. On the way he met Pūraṇa in his flight, and said: "I set out, sir, to see my noble masters perform a miracle. Where are you going?" "What is a miracle to you? (*Kin te paṭihāreṇa ?*)," replied Pūraṇa, "Give me that pot and cord!" He then took the pot and cord, went to the bank of a river, tied the pot round his neck, and jumped into the stream. Raising bubbles in the water, he died, and was reborn in the Avīci hell.
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The *Divyāvadāna* tells a slightly different story. The instigator of the miracle-contest is here said to be the tempter, Māra. In the form of Pūraṇa he suggested to Maskarin that the Buddha should be challenged to a contest; in the form of Maskarin he repeated the suggestion to Sañjayin, and so on from one of the six heretics to another. The six then asked King Bimbisāra to arrange the contest, but, mindful of the Buddha's orders, he refused. Thereupon the heretics left for Śrāvastī, followed by the Buddha, who knew of their plans by virtue of his superhuman insight. King Prasenajit of Kosala was more favourable to the ascetics' proposal than had been Bimbisāra, and he carried the challenge to the Buddha, who was staying at the Jetavana. The Buddha agreed to take part in a miracle contest after an interval of seven days. Meanwhile the heretics gathered their supporters together and laid their plans.
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On the seventh day the contest took place outside the city, where each teacher was provided with a specially prepared pavilion. The Buddha performed several spectacular miracles, but the six heretics were powerless, and their discomfiture was completed by a violent rainstorm, caused by Pañcika, the general of the *yakṣas*. The heretics ran in all directions, but the Buddha was untouched by the rain, and his rivals were put to the final humiliation of having to take refuge in his pavilion.
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Then Pūraṇa, fearing that the Buddha would win over his disciples, began to discuss philosophical questions with them, and tempers rose high. Metaphysical slogans—“The world is eternal!” “The world is transient!” “The world is both!” “The world is neither!” “Body and soul are one!” “Body and soul are different!”—were bandied from one to another of the ascetics and their followers, and they left the scene of the contest a quarrelling rabble.¹
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¹ “Antavāl lokaḥ,” “Anantaḥ,” “Antavāṁś c’ ānantavāṁś ca,” “N’aiv’ āntavān n’ānantavān,” “Sa jīvas tac charīram,” “Anyo jīvo ‘nyac charīram” iti te kalahajātā viharanti bhaṇḍana-jātā vigṛhītā vivādam āpannāḥ. Divyāvadāna, p. 164.
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The terrified Pūraṇa took to flight. On his way he was met by a hermaphrodite (paṇḍaka), who disrespectfully asked him where he was going. He replied that the time had come for his departure from the body, his faculties being somewhat impaired. The sun, he said, had given him a thirst, and he asked the whereabouts of the nearest pond.² The hermaphrodite, addressing Pūraṇa by uncomplimentary epithets such as śramaṇ’-adhama and hīn’-asat-puruṣa, pointed to a nearby lotus pond. There Pūraṇa tied a pot full of sand about his neck, jumped into the water, and was drowned.
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² The words of Pūraṇa are very obscure. Gamanāya me samayaḥ pratyupasthitaḥ kāyasya me balavīryaṁ kiñcit spṛṣṭhaś ca bhāvaḥ sukhaduḥkhate me. Anāvṛtam jñānam ih’ ārhatāṁ dūrāpagato ‘smi. Paratimir’-āpanudaś ca tṛṣam patati. Acakṣva me dūṣika etam artham—śītodakā kutra sā puṣkiriṇī? Op. cit., p. 165. The editors of the text remark, “Much of this page is evidently in verse, but is too corrupt to be so arranged.” Op. cit., p. 706.
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The other ascetics (nirgranthāḥ) made a search for Pūraṇa, and while seeking him they met a prostitute. They asked her whether she had seen Pūraṇa, “clothed in the garment of righteousness”; she replied scornfully with an obscene verse, and would give them no information. Ultimately they found him lying dead in the lotus pond. They pulled out his body, and, leaving it on one side, they went away.
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The Tibetan version of the story, as summarized by Rockhill,³ appears to agree in essentials with the Divyāvadāna version.
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³ The Life of the Buddha, p. 80.
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These stories clearly contain elements inserted for the edification of the Buddhist community, but the central fact of both versions, the suicide of Pūraṇa, is by no means incredible. Death by ritual suicide was the common end of the Jaina ascetic who felt his faculties begin to fail, and similar suicides by Ājīvikas are well attested.¹ It is probable, as the *Bhagavatī Sūtra* suggests,² that Pūraṇa’s followers developed a legend of their master ending his life by suicide in an odour of sanctity, and that this story was twisted by the Buddhists into the complimentary forms paraphrased above.
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¹ V. infra, pp. 127 ff.
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² V. supra, p. 83.
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Certain elements of the two Buddhist stories differ, but their common features are more numerous. Both agree that, after a miracle contest at Sāvatthi, in which Pūraṇa and his fellow ascetics were worsted, and which was followed by a violent storm, he committed suicide by drowning, with a pot tied about his neck.
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The pot occurs in both accounts; this fact strengthens the probability that this feature of the story has some basis of fact. We are reminded of the potter’s shop in which Makkhali Gosāla died, and also that Dravidian Ājīvika ascetics seem to have been in the habit of performing fatal penance in large funerary urns (*tāḷi*).³
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³ V. infra, pp. 111-12.
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Other incidents in the stories of Pūraṇa’s death remind us of the *Bhagavatī Sūtra*’s account of the death of Gosāla. Both events take place in Sāvatthi, both follow a contest at which miraculous powers are displayed, and both take place in an atmosphere of great excitement and tension among the ascetic communities. The great storm which preceded Pūraṇa’s death suggests the Last Great Storm Cloud, one of the eight finalities declared by Gosāla in his last illness.⁴ Pūraṇa’s frantic flight from the scene of the contest and his violent thirst may be parallelled by the delirium of Gosāla, when he bathed in muddy water used for mixing the potter’s clay.⁵ Mango stones occur in both stories.⁶ The strange figure of the prostitute in the *Divyāvadāna* version of the story tenuously suggests Hālāhalā the potter-woman, for it would seem, in the light of the numerous references to the licentious conduct of the early Ājīvikas,⁷ that the author of the *Bhagavatī Sūtra* intended to insinuate that her relations with Gosāla were closer than those of a hospitable lay disciple.
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⁴ V. supra, p. 68.
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⁵ V. supra, p. 62.
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⁶ V. supra, pp. 61-64.
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⁷ V. infra, pp. 123 ff.
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Probably certain elements of the story of Gosāla’s death have found their way, in a corrupt form, into the Buddhist story of Pūraṇa’s suicide. If this be the case the credibility of the former story is strengthened without by any means invalidating the latter. We may provisionally accept the historicity of the suicide of Pūraṇa at Sāvatthi, at the same time recognizing that the details of both versions of the story are unreliable.
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The event is said to have taken place during the reigns of King Bimbisāra of Magadha and Pasenadi of Kosala. Rockhill, basing his view on the Tibetan version, believes that it occurred in the sixteenth year of the Buddha’s ministry.¹ This date seems definitely too early. As Malalasekera has pointed out,² it would exclude the possibility of King Ajātasattu visiting Pūraṇa,³ since the former could have been only a small child at the time of the death of the latter. There are other weighty objections to Rockhill’s figure. Buddha’s ministry lasted forty-four years. If we retain 483 B.C. as the date of his *nirvāṇa*,⁴ on Rockhill’s theory Pūraṇa’s suicide must have occurred *c.* 511 B.C. But, on the basis of our synchronisms,⁵ and of the *Bhagavatī Sūtra*’s statement that Gosāla’s ministry lasted for sixteen years,⁶ the latter’s ministry must have commenced *c.* 501 B.C., or ten years after Pūraṇa’s death. This invalidates the strong Buddhist tradition that the ministries of the six heretical teachers were contemporary, and renders it quite impossible that Pūraṇa could have been in any way subordinate to Makkhali Gosāla.
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¹ *The Life of the Buddha*, p. 79.
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² *DPPN.*, s.v. *Pūraṇa*.
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³ V. supra, pp. 11–12.
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⁴ V. supra, p. 74, n. 1.
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⁵ V. supra, p. 74.
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⁶ V. supra, p. 32.
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We suggest that Pūraṇa’s death took place towards the end of the reigns of Bimbisāra and Pasenadi; thus it must have occurred at least nine or ten years before that of the Buddha, on the basis of the Sinhalese Chronicle,⁷ and eight years or more before that of Makkhali, on the basis of our previous calculations.⁸ The Jaina statement that Pūraṇa died in the eleventh year of Mahāvīra’s asceticism⁹ is not unplausible. It would place the event in the year *c.* 500–499 B.C., immediately after Makkhali Gosāla’s claim to enlightenment. This does not invalidate the framework of the *Sāmañña-phala Sutta*, wherein King Ajātasattu states that he had sought guidance from Pūraṇa as well as from the other five heretics, since he may well have visited Pūraṇa before his usurpation of the throne of Magadha. This date for Pūraṇa’s death does, however, somewhat lessen the probability that he was a follower of Makkhali Gosāla. That he died in the first or second year of Makkhali’s *jina*-hood, after what seems to have been a long ascetic career, indicates that he was Makkhali’s senior. But it is not impossible for an older teacher to respect a considerably younger man as his spiritual superior, and a comparatively young man may acquire a reputation of great sanctity. Despite Pūraṇa’s probable seniority to Makkhali our conclusion is by no means invalidated.
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⁷ V. supra, p. 73, n. 2.
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⁸ V. supra, p. 74.
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⁹ V. supra, p. 83.
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We may tentatively reconstruct the relations of the two prophets as follows :—Pūraṇa, a heretical leader of long standing, maintaining a fatalistic doctrine with tendencies to antinomianism, came in contact with Makkhali Gosāla, a younger teacher with doctrines much the same as his own, but with a more successful appeal to the public. Recognizing his eclipse, he admitted the superiority of the new teacher, and accepted the sixfold classification of men, which placed Makkhali Gosāla and his forerunners Nanda Vaccha and Kisa Saṅkicca in the highest category.¹ Soon after this he decided that his star had set, and ended his own life.
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¹ V. supra, pp. 27 ff.
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A passing reference to an Āpūraṇa the son of Kaśyapa is to be found in the *Mahābhārata*, where the word occurs in the enumeration of the names of *nāgas* inhabiting the subterranean city of Bhogavatī.² This is probably a coincidence, but it is not wholly impossible that the name found its way into the catalogue through an early editor who had heard of Pūraṇa ; on this hypothesis the extra syllable prefixed to the name might be accounted for by the necessity of avoiding an iambic cadence, which would otherwise occur throughout the *pāda*.
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² *Nāgānām eka-vaṃsānāṃ yathā-śreṣṭhaṃ tu me śṛṇu*, 8 . . .
Linked texts (5)
- Divyāvadāna — Sanskrit
- Sāmaññaphalasutta — Pāli
- Dhammapada — Pāli
- Mahābhārata — Vyāsa, Sanskrit
- Viyāhapannatti — Sudharman, Ardhamāgadhī Prakrit