History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c17.s6.17

c17.s6.17

This chain of fleeting references, dating from Gupta times to the fifteenth century, is sufficient to indicate that the Ājīvikas survived over that period. In the Dravidian South, as will be shown in our next chapter, they maintained themselves against discriminatory taxation until the fourteenth century. There, with Hindu, Jaina, and Buddhist, they were a definite factor in the religious situation of Coḷamaṇḍalam, and their system was important enough to warrant detailed refutations from their chief rivals. In the North, on the other hand, Ājīvikism may have become insignificant even as early as the Śuṅga period; but the references leave little doubt that occasional Ājīvika mendicants were to be found there at a much later date. In Kashmīr they may even have risen for a short while to a position of great influence, under the mad king Harṣadeva, when strange naked ascetics destroyed the orthodox ikons of the capital.⁵