History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c17.s3.20

c17.s3.20

His use of the word *ādayaḥ* indicates that Śīlāṅka knew of more than one sect of followers of Gosāla, and that the term Ājīvika was not regularly used by all his followers. We shall see in our second part that differences of doctrine developed within the Ājīvika community, small though it was.² Is it possible that the Vainayikas, called by Śīlāṅka followers of Gosāla,³ but not referred to as Ājīvikas, were one such schism? Śīlāṅka declares in another context that the Vainayikas seek a rebirth in heaven (not complete salvation or *mokṣa*, as in the first reference quoted above), by fourfold good conduct, in mind, word, body, and in giving towards gods, kings, ascetics, kinsfolk, elders, inferiors, mother, and father—a total of thirty-two categories.⁴ The same statement concerning the Vinayavādins is made by the later commentator Guṇaratna, but he includes among their teachers such famous names as Vasiṣṭha, Vālmīki, and Vyāsa,¹ as well as Parāśara, who is elsewhere said by Guṇaratna to have taught a doctrine of natural evolution²; and he nowhere connects them with Gosāla or with the Ājīvikas. The doctrines of Gosāla are often obscure; it is true that the Ājīvikas were frequently accused by their opponents of antinomianism and immorality, but perhaps their ethics were not in most respects less strict than those of other sects of the time; yet, even after making the utmost allowance for the *odium theologicum* of their opponents, it seems unlikely that the average follower of Gosāla’s doctrines placed so strong an emphasis on ethics as Śīlāṅka suggests. Unless Śīlāṅka was mistaken we can only explain this puzzling reference by suggesting that the Vinayavādins or Vainayikas were a later sect, which perhaps arose as a schism of the Ājīvikas, and which, while maintaining very different doctrines, yet remembered Gosāla with respect. If it be admitted, on the strength of Utpala’s statement and of other less definite suggestions, that some of the Ājīvikas drifted towards unorthodox Vaiṣṇavism, we may tentatively identify these with the Vinayavādins, and thus also account for the statement of Guṇaratna that the latter revered the saints of Purāṇic legend. Thus we may also account for the difficult -ādayaḥ in the third phrase of Śīlāṅka quoted above.