History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c14.s5.53

c14.s5.53

From this it is evident that, whatever may have been the habits of free-lance Ājīvika ascetics, the organized sect of Makkhali Gosāla was a religious body with a normal corporate and social life, a *saṅgha* in fact, as were the Buddhist and Jaina orders, with a regular meeting place. The use of the word *sabhā* in this connection is striking, since the term seems to imply a building of the type used for royal courts or for folk-moots of the free tribes, and is rarely used to designate a religious edifice. Of the latter usage the Pāli texts seem to present only one example.¹ The word may mean " a public rest house or hostelry ",² and it may therefore be suggested that the Ājīviya-sabhā at Polāsapura was merely a rest house for ascetics of the order. But it seems more appropriate to accept the word in its more usual meaning of " an assembly hall ". Its use suggests that the Ājīvika community employed their meeting-place not only for religious ceremonies but for secular meetings, and was tending, even at this early date, to cut itself off from other communities. In the Dravidian Deccan, at a much later period, it appears with some of the attributes of a caste,³ and it is possible that it began to develop caste characteristics very early. A closely knit corporate life, embracing monk and layman alike, may have arisen as a reaction to the opposition and scorn levelled at the community by other Indian sects, both orthodox and heretical, and the rarity of references to Ājīvikism in later Sanskrit literature may in part be due to the isolation in which the Ājīvika community existed.