Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c14.s3: The Ājīvika Initiation

History and Doctrines of the Ājīvikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c14.s3

Language
English

The Ājīvika Initiation

c14.s3.1

New members seem normally to have been inducted into the Ājīvika order after an initiation ceremony. Before the ministry of Makkhali Gosāla, among local Ājīvika groups and independent mendicants, the ceremony seems to have varied considerably from one group to another. We have already met unscrupulous men who initiated themselves into a profitable career of asceticism by the simple process of losing their clothes.² Many spurious mendicants of this type, often loosely called Ājīvikas, must have existed both before and after the days of Makkhali Gosāla. We may, however, assume that Makkhali’s organization of the loosely knit ascetics was effective in introducing some regularity into the procedure of admission to the order and initiation.

c14.s3.2

² V. supra, p. 102.

c14.s3.3

Two Pāli references give us some indication of the processes of entry into the Ājīvika mendicant fraternity. *Tittira Jātaka*³ tells of an unfortunate false ascetic (*niggatiko duṭṭha-tāpaso*), who, after a career of chicanery and fraud, is judged and executed by a lion. The tiger who prosecutes him at the lion’s court describes the prisoner in a few lines of verse of considerable interest; among other things, says the tiger, he has “burnt his hands by grasping a lump”.⁴ The commentary elucidates the phrase: “At the time of his going forth as an Ājīvika his hands were burnt by grasping a heated lump.”⁵ This seems a reliable indication that the early Ājīvika was sometimes initiated by a painful ordeal, and there are faint suggestions of the survival of the practice at a much later date.

c14.s3.4

³ iii. 536.

c14.s3.5

⁴ Hatthā daḍḍhā piṇḍapaṭiggahaṇena. Op. cit., p. 541.

c14.s3.6

⁵ Ājīvika-pabbajjam-pabbajjita-kāle uṇha-piṇḍa-paṭiggahaṇena hatth’ āpi kir’ assa daḍḍhā. Op. cit., p. 542.

c14.s3.7

In *Mahānāradakassapa Jātaka*⁶ the ascetic Guṇa is described as an “ignorant, naked, wretched, and blindly foolish Ājīvika”.⁷

c14.s3.8

⁶ Jāt. vi, pp. 219 ff.

c14.s3.9

⁷ Ajānantam nagga-bhoggam nissirikam andha-bālam Ājīvikam.

c14.s3.10

The word used in this phrase to express his nudity is nagga-bhogga, which the Pāli Text Society’s Dictionary interprets as “one whose goods are nakedness”. The term is thrice employed in the Jātakas,¹ the first and second instances describing the condition of castaways, one of whom became a false ascetic,² and the third being an epithet of Guṇa. Very similar compound adjectives are to be found in use much later than the time of the Jātakas’ composition. An inscription at Belagāmi, Mysore,³ dated A.D. 1162, catalogues the types of ascetic to whom alms were given at the Koḍiya maṭh; as well as the Jaina kṣapaṇakas and the Hindu paramahaṃsas, who seem to have been habitually naked,⁴ the visitors to the maṭh included nagna-bhagnas.⁵ The Rājatarangiṇī refers to rugṇa-nagnāṭaka ascetics, with emaciated or decayed noses, feet, and hands,⁶ who have many points in common with, and may have been, Ājīvikas. We therefore believe that the Pāli word nagga-bhogga should be read as a dvandva adjective, rather than as a bahuvrīhi, and that its second member is equivalent to the Sanskrit bhugna (“bent”), rather than bhogya (“property”); thus the meaning of the term would be not “one whose goods are nakedness”, but “one naked and crippled”. The Ājīvika initiatory ordeals may well have resulted in such mutilation and deformity as to qualify the ascetic for these titles.

c14.s3.11

¹ Jāt. iv, p. 160; v, p. 75; vi, p. 225.

c14.s3.12

² V. supra, p. 102.

c14.s3.13

³ Epi. Carn. vii, Shikarpur no. 102.

c14.s3.14

⁴ V. infra, p. 114.

c14.s3.15

⁵ Professor B. A. Saletore (Mediæval Jainism, p. 219), following Rice’s translation, believes that this word represents two classes of ascetic, the nagnas and the bhagnas. This view of the existence of similar terms in the Pāli and in the Kannada inscription cannot apply to more than a single class.

c14.s3.16

⁶ Rājatarangiṇī vii, 1092–4. V. infra, p. 206.

c14.s3.17

Another element in the Ājīvika initiation, for which there is confirmation in a later source, is described in the Dhammapada Commentary, in the story of Jambuka, to which we have already referred.⁷ The events there described ostensibly refer to the unorganized pre-Makkhali Ājīvikas, but the details of the account of Jambuka’s initiation may have been provided by Buddhaghosa, and perhaps apply to the organized community of Makkhali. Jambuka’s habits are so disgusting that his parents decide that he is not fitted for ordinary life, but only for the Ājīvikas (*Ājīvikānam esa anucchaviko*). Therefore they take him to a local group of Ājīvika ascetics, apparently while he is still a child, and request that he be initiated into their community. The boy is placed in a pit up to his neck, planks are laid over the pit, above his collar-bones, and, sitting on the planks, the Ājīvikas pull out his hair with a piece of the rib of a palm-leaf.¹ It seems that the early Ājīvikas, like the Jainas, extracted the hair by the roots, and that the custom persisted among them is attested by the Tamil text *Civañāṇa-cittiyār*.²

c14.s3.18

⁷ Dhp. Comm. ii, p. 52. V. supra, p. 97.

c14.s3.19

¹ *Gala-ppamāṇe āvāṭe thapetvā, dvinnam jattūnam upari padarāṇi datvā, tesam upari nisīditvā, tāl-aṭṭhi-khaṇḍena kese luñcimsu.*

c14.s3.20

² *CNC.* ed. Mudaliyar, p. 255. V. infra, p. 202.

c14.s3.21

Yet Gosāla Mankhaliputta is described as tearing his beard in his last delirium, and in Kumāradāsa’s *Jānakī-haraṇa* the Ājīvika’s head, like that of the orthodox Hindu ascetic, is covered with a pile of matted locks.³ The Ājīvikas depicted at Borobudur have hair (Plate II).⁴ Thus it seems that Ājīvikas were not always tonsured or clean-shaven. The extraction of the hair by the roots, like the grasping of the heated lump, was probably an ordeal intended to render the novice oblivious to physical pain, and to test his resolution, and, as with the Jainas,⁵ was not usually repeated after initiation, or was only repeated at distant intervals.

c14.s3.22

³ *Dambh’-ājīvikam uttuṅga-jaṭā-maṇḍita-mastakam Kañcin maskariṇam Sītā dadarś’ āśramam āgatam.* *Jānakīharaṇa* x, 76. V. infra, pp. 150 ff.

c14.s3.23

⁴ V. infra, p. 108.

c14.s3.24

⁵ Schubring, *Die Lehre der Jainas*, p. 159.

c14.s3.25

The other feature of Jambuka’s initiation, burial up to the neck, is mentioned in Japanese Buddhist sources as being part of the Ājīvika’s ascetic technique.⁶ The pit in which the novice was placed may have symbolized his spiritual rebirth from the womb of Mother Earth, or, since burial was not unknown in Ancient India, his “death to the world”.

c14.s3.26

⁶ V. infra, p. 112.

c14.s3.27

Two further points connected with entry into Ājīvika asceticism may here be noted. The story of Jambuka indicates that, as with the Buddhists and Jainas, novices were accepted by the Ājīvikas while still children. And the Ājīvika sixfold classification of men, as described in the *Aṅguttara Nikāya* and by Buddhaghosa, shows that women were permitted to enter the Ājīvika order, and that their status was not significantly lower than that of the male members of the sect.¹

c14.s3.28

¹ *Itthī-purisa-nānattanti vadati*. Sum. Vil. i, p. 162; Aṅg. iii, p. 38.

Linked texts (7)