History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c16.s3.102

c16.s3.102

The Ājīvikas must have lost possession of the caves and the inscriptions must have been defaced at some time before the fifth century A.D., and probably before the commencement of the Gupta era, at a period when the Brahmī alphabet was still widely understood. Whether the Ājīvikas voluntarily abandoned the caves or were forcibly evicted, it is evident that their influence waned rapidly in Magadha from the end of the Maurya period onwards. We find no later material or epigraphic remains of them in Northern India, and although references to them occur in Sanskrit literature for over a thousand years after the deaths of their Maurya patrons, these are brief and few. It is doubtful if they were again a significant factor in North Indian culture.