History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c14.s1.46

c14.s1.46

The Ājīvika Upaka is also referred to as bearing a staff. ⁴ Indeed staves probably became a regular mark of the Ājīvika order. But it must be noted that, except for its employment in the *sūtra* of Pāṇini, and as an epithet of Gosāla, the word *maskarin* is not to be found until the classical period of Sanskrit literature, and then seems to be used with very varied connotations. Kumāradāsa equates *maskarin* and *ājīvika*, ⁵ but the *Bhaṭṭikāvya*, of the sixth or seventh century A.D. ⁶ uses the word in a sense which certainly does not suggest a follower of Gosāla. ⁷ Bāṇa describes a *maskarin* with a skull for a begging-bowl and wearing a red robe, who must surely have been a Śaivite.¹ The commentator Utpala seems to equate the words *ājīvika* and *ekadaṇḍin*,² the latter certainly meaning an ascetic with a single staff as part of his insignia. But Halāyudha the lexicographer quotes the word *ājīvika* as a member of a class containing various other terms for a heretical ascetic,³ while *maskarin* occurs in the same verse as do the names of more orthodox and respectable ascetics, such as *tapasvin*, *parivrājaka*, *tāpasa*, etc.⁴ Hemacandra also includes the word *maskarin* with *vaikhānasa* *vānaprastha* and *yati* in a group not including *ājīvika*.⁵ In fact we have no reason to believe that the term *maskarin* ever meant more than a staff-bearing mendicant of any order. Certainly it was sometimes used to designate the Ājīvikas, but it included a group much wider than they, as Dr. Barua ultimately recognized.⁶ This being the case we cannot believe that an "order" of *maskarin*s existed before Gosāla's day, and that the Ājīvikas developed from them.