History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c13.s3.14

c13.s3.14

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.