History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c14.s1.19

c14.s1.19

It is quite evident that these wanderers maintained a wide range of doctrines and varied rules of conduct. They were known by various titles, which usually denoted loosely knit classes of ascetic rather than regularly organized orders, as the Buddhist bhikkhus and the Jaina samaṇas later became. Beside these two terms we find others such as acelaka, nigaṇṭha, and of course ājīvika, which are used quite loosely, and obviously do not imply membership of any organized religious body. Thus in the Majjhima Nikāya¹ the Buddha declares that in his long experience of transmigration he has known no Ājīvika to go to heaven but one, and that one was a believer in karma and the efficiency of works.² This suggests either that all the early Ājīvikas did not accept Makkhali Gosāla’s quietist determinism and that the term was sometimes used to denote a wider class of heretical mendicant with varying beliefs, or that there were early schisms of Makkhali’s sect which rejected the cardinal doctrine of the founder. The former is the more probable explanation.