History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c18.s1.41

c18.s1.41

The presence of the word Ājīvika in certain South Indian inscriptions was known to Hoernle,⁶ who, following Hultzsch,⁷ identified the Ājīvikas there mentioned with the Jainas. Barua also noted the recurrence of the name.⁸ But neither authority appears to have been aware of the full range of inscriptions, their knowledge being based on those at Poygai. We have here evidence that the Ājīvikas existed not only around one small centre during the first half of the thirteenth century, but that they were present in what are now the Arcot and Nellore districts of Madras Province, and in the Kolar District of Mysore, for at least nine hundred years, from A.D. 446, the date of the inscription of Simhavarman Pallava, until A.D. 1346, the date of the Guḍihaḷḷi inscription. The evidence of the astrologer Vaidyanātha Dīkṣita,¹ indicates that they survived into the following century.