History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c17.s3.47

c17.s3.47

We are now in a position to understand a little better the fourth statement of Śīlāṅka quoted above,² which declares that the belief in return from *mokṣa* is held by the Trairāśika followers of Gosāla, who have twenty-one *sūtras* arranged according to the order of the Trairāśika *sūtras* in the *Pūrvas*. The last word probably refers to the fourteen *Pūrvas* of the original Jaina canon, which have long been lost. According to the *Samavāya* and the *Nandi*³ these were summarized in the third part of the *Dṛṣṭivāda*, called *Pūrvagatam*. Śīlāṅka seems to have confused this part with the second, which contained the sūtras of the four sects, unless indeed he looked upon the Dṛṣṭivāda as itself a Pūrva. He seems to have known of the Dṛṣṭivāda, but he disagrees with the Samavāya and the Nandi in attributing twenty-one sūtras to the Trairāśikas in place of twenty-two in the Samavāya and Nandi lists. Either Śīlāṅka did not know of these lists, or he was quoting from a defective memory. The best interpretation of his obscure phrase that we can offer is: "The Trairāśikas who follow Gosāla (i.e. the Ājīvikas, not the Rohagupta Trairāśikas) have sūtras arranged in the same way as are those of the Trairāśikas (i.e. the Rohagupta Trairāśikas) in the Pūrvas (i.e. the Dṛṣṭivāda)."