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History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c13.s3: Pakudha Kaccāyana

History and Doctrines of the Ājīvikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c13.s3

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Pakudha Kaccāyana

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The relations of this ascetic teacher to the later Ājīvikas are less clear than those of Pūraṇa Kassapa, but there is evidence to show that he too had some influence on the finished doctrine of the sect. We have already seen that he is praised with Makkhali Pūraṇa and Nigaṇṭha in a significant verse of the Saṃyutta Nikāya.¹

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¹ V supra, p. 80 and infra, p. 217.

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His doctrine, according to the Sāmañña-phala Sutta, was one of seven eternal and immutable elements, earth, water, fire, air, life, joy, and sorrow.² The Majjhima Nikāya³ incorporates with this doctrine part of Makkhali Gosāla's fatalist creed, and one of the Chinese versions of the Sāmañña-phala Sutta makes of Pakudha a determinist.⁴ His characteristic teaching is, however, a very primitive atomism, perhaps the earliest of Indian atomic theories.⁵

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² D. i, 56.

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³ ii, 243.

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⁴ Walser, op. cit., p. 142.

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⁵ Basham, History and Doctrines of the Ājīvikas, pp. 269–70.

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As we hope to establish in our second part, the Southern Ājīvikas held a theory of elements very similar to that of Pakudha. The three chief Tamil sources, Maṇimēkalai,⁶ Nīlakēci,⁷ and Civañāṉa-cittiyār,⁸ all declare that, according to Ājīvika doctrine, there are five immutable atomic elements (aṇu or poruḷ): earth, air, water, fire, and life (uyir or cīvam). Maṇimēkalai, however, the oldest of these sources, adds "but joy and sorrow, these too are atoms".⁹ Nīlakēci leaves the total of the elements at five, but Civañāṉa-cittiyār states, "Our Lord has declared to us the seven which we must consider, including these two which are joined with them, namely good and evil."¹⁰ This is surely the seven-element theory of Pakudha Kaccāyana, with the more moral categories puṇya and pāpa substituted for the hedonistic sukha and duḥkha.

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⁶ xxvii, 163.

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⁷ 113. V. infra, pp. 263–65.

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⁸ Nīl. vv, 674–5. V. infra, p. 265.

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⁹ CÑC., ed. Mudaliyar, p. 256, v. 2. V. infra, pp. 265–66.

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¹⁰ Inpam um tuṉpam um ivaiy um aṇu-v eṉa, Maṇi xxvii, 163. V. infra, p. 263.

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A further point in which Pakudha suggests the conduct of the Ājīvikas of later times is to be found in Buddhaghosa's commentary on the Sāmañña-phala Sutta. His brief remarks on Makkhali Gosāla and Pūraṇa Kassapa have already been discussed,¹ and certainly do not give us reason to accept his statements on Pakudha without question. For the names of Makkhali and Pūraṇa Buddhaghosa supplies fantastic and derogatory derivations, but in the case of Pakudha he contents himself with stating that he avoided cold water. Even after excretion he did not perform a ritual ablution, unless he obtained hot water or rice-gruel (kañjiya). To cross a stream, Buddhaghosa continues, was a breach of his vows, for which he atoned by making a mound of sand.² The kañji and the mound of sand suggest practices of the Ājīvikas. Some southern Ājīvika ascetics seem to have used kañji as their regular food,³ while the heap of sand is parallelled by a heap of red powder, which was part of the religious paraphernalia of an Ājīvika ascetic mentioned in the Jātaka.⁴ These points of contact are admittedly very slight, but they tend to strengthen the conclusion derived from the similarity of Pakudha’s doctrines to those of the later Ājīvikas, that he and his followers had some hand in the development of the sect.

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¹¹ Puṇṇiya-pāvam eṉṉum iraṇṭiṉ um poruṭ' avaittē-y eṉṉiya-v iv arriṉ ōtum ē' eṉa-v eṉkaḷ ōtu naṉṉiya-v oruvaṉ kūrum. CÑC., p. 266, v. 10.

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¹ V. supra, pp. 37, 82-83.

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² Sīt'-udaka-paṭikkhitto esa. Vaccam katvā pi udakakiccam na karoti, unhodakam vā kañjiyam vā labhitvā karoti. Nadim vā magg'-odakam vā atikkamma, ‘sīlam me bhinnan’ ti vālika-thūpam katvā sīlam adhiṭṭhāya gacchati. Sum. Vil., i, p. 144.

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³ IA, xli, pp. 88-9. V. infra, p. 204.

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⁴ V. infra, p. 113.

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About Pakudha’s life and works we have no certain information. Dr. Malalasekera states that his followers did not hold him in high esteem, and that he did not lay claim to full enlightenment,⁵ but the references on which he bases his statement ⁶ repeat the same phrases for each of the six heretical leaders, and therefore do not carry conviction. Elsewhere the six are referred to as being held in great respect,⁷ and Nigaṇṭha Nātaputta and Makkhali Gosāla certainly seem to have laid claim to full enlightenment, although in the passages referred to they, along with the four other heretics, are said not to have done so.

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⁵ DPPN., s.v. Pakudha.

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⁶ Majjh. i, 240; ii, 4; Sam. i, 68.

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⁷ V. supra, p. 11.

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Dr. Barua ⁸ has equated Pakudha (called Kakudha in Buddhist Sanskrit texts) with Kabandhin Kātyāyana, one of the questioners of the sage Pippalāda in the Praśna Upaniṣad. He believes that the names Kakudha and Kabandhin, which both indicate that their owner was a humpback, are equivalent. There are no further points of contact, however. The *Upaniṣad* merely states that Kabandhin asked Pippalāda whence all beings came,¹ and received the reply that they were produced by Prajāpati from matter (*rayi*) and breath (*prāṇa*).² If the equivalence be accepted, it probably implies that Pakudha or Kakudha was the senior of the Buddha and of the other heretics, and that he was closer to the main current of Indian philosophy than were Makkhali and Pūraṇa.

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⁸ Pre-Buddhistic Indian Philosophy, p. 281.

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¹ Kuto ha va imāḥ prajāḥ prajāyanta? *Praśna*, Poona edn., p. 3.

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² Śaṅkara interprets these terms as Soma and Agni. Op. cit., p. 4.

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In any case we may infer that Pakudha was less influential than were either of the two ascetics we have previously considered. In the Jaina texts Makkhali Gosāla appears as a real human being; Pūraṇa Kassapa emerges as a personality in the two accounts of his suicide; Nigaṇṭha Nātaputta was the founder of an enduring sect; and the materialist Ajita Kesakambalī seems to have been singled out by the Buddha for scathing condemnation.³ On the other hand the two remaining members of the group of six heretics, Pakudha Kaccāyana the atomist and Sañjaya Belaṭṭhiputta the agnostic, are never more than shadowy lay figures, nowhere individualized, not worthy of a special mention apart from their fellow ascetic leaders. We may therefore conclude that they made but a slight impression upon contemporary religious life.

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³ V. supra, p. 55.

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