History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c14.s3.21

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.