History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c14.s5.32

c14.s5.32

Whatever may have been the practices of the primitive solitary Ājīvika in *Lomahaṃsa Jātaka*,⁴ the organized Ājīvika community does not seem to have countenanced the performance of ascetic practices of the most repulsive type. The boy Jambuka, to whom we have already referred,⁵ developed a propensity to nudity and the eating of ordure at a very early age, and for this reason his parents had him initiated into the Ājīvika *saṅgha*. As he was quite satisfied by his repulsive diet he refused to go on the usual begging rounds with his fellow mendicants, who, when they learned of the disgusting behaviour of the boy in their absence, promptly expelled him from the community. The *Dhammapada* commentary gives as their motive for his expulsion the fear that the Buddhist monks might discover Jambuka's evil habits and expose the Ājīvikas to scorn and ridicule. But it seems probable that the Ājīvikas, extremists in asceticism though they were, had definite rules of ascetic conduct, and that their penances were exceeded in repulsiveness by those of some independent ascetics.