History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c19: Appendix to Part I: The Iconoclast Ascetics of Kashmīr

History and Doctrines of the Ājīvikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c19

Language: English

Appendix to Part I: The Iconoclast Ascetics of Kashmīr

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¹ See Stein, *Rājatarangiṇī*, vol. ii, pp. 688 ff.

Kalhaṇa’s *Rājatarangiṇī* states that ascetics, in many respects resembling the Ājīvikas, appeared in Kashmir in considerable numbers during the reign of the tyrannical and ill-fated King Harṣa or Harṣadeva (1089–1101).

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The chronicler relates that this king was, from his youth, strongly influenced by the customs of Southern India. He was the contemporary of the Cālukya Vikramâditya VI Tribhuvanamalla, whose court poet was Bilhaṇa the Kashmīrī,² and who is mentioned in the chronicle by his *biruda* Parmāḍi or Parmāṇḍi. Harṣa is said to have fallen deeply in love with Candalā, the queen of Parmāḍi, and to have vowed to win her by force; it appears that he actually contemplated an expedition against the Cālukya for this purpose.³ One of his youthful friends was a southerner, Keśin the Karṇāṭa, who was killed in a fruitless *coup d’état* against Harṣa’s father, King Kalaśa.⁴ The poet further states that Harṣa favoured southern fashions, and introduced coin-types from Kārṇāṭaka.⁵

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² *Ibid.*, vii, 931.

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³ *Ibid.*, vii, 928 ff.

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⁴ *Ibid.*, vii, 675.

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⁵ *Dakṣiṇāty’ ābhavad bhaṅgiḥ priyā tasya vilāsinīḥ, | dakṣiṇātyāḥ pracāritāḥ*—*Ibid.*, vii, 926.

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The latter statement is strikingly confirmed by the coins themselves. For at least two centuries Harṣa’s predecessors had issued only a bronze coinage, bearing on the obverse a seated goddess, and on the reverse a standing king.⁶ Harṣa’s bronze coins, probably issued early in the reign, bear the same devices, but he also issued a plentiful gold and silver coinage, which generally bears new types. The first of these, in gold only, has the device of a horseman, which was probably borrowed from the Śāhi dynasty of Gandhāra; while the second type, both in gold and silver, bears on the obverse a standing elephant and on the reverse the inscription only.¹ The latter type, according to Rapson, was borrowed from the coinage of Koṅgudeśa.²

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⁶ *Ibid.*, vii, 927.

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¹ Cunningham, loc. cit.

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² *Indian Coins*, p. 32.

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The chronicler tells the source of the precious metals from which Harṣa minted this abundant new coinage. When the king was short of money his evil counsellor Loṣṭadhara, grandson of Haladhara, advised him to restore his fortunes by looting the treasure of the temples and melting down the images of the gods. He is also said to have advised the confiscation of the *agrahāras* belonging to the Kalaśeśvara temple at Śrīnagara, and even its demolition to provide materials for bridge-building.³ The king was at first dissuaded by his righteous counsellor Prayāga, but ultimately he accepted Loṣṭadhara’s advice, and methodically looted first the temple treasures, and then the sacred ikons themselves. The policy of iconoclasm was so thorough that one Udayarāja was specially appointed as “superintendent of the destruction of the gods” (*dev’-ōṭpāṭana-nāyaka*).⁴ Of the larger images in the kingdom only four, two Hindu and two Buddhist, were spared.⁵ This was followed by the inevitable palace revolution, and the assassination of the king. Harṣa’s tragic end, graphically described by Kalhaṇa, took place in the hut of a base ascetic (*kṣudra-tapasvin*) Guṇa, whither the king had been led by his faithful attendant Mukta. The ascetic betrayed his hiding-place to the usurper Uccala, the hut was surrounded, and the king and his good friend Prayāga were slain on the spot by Uccala’s troops.⁶

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³ *Rājatarangiṇī* vii, 1075-8.

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⁴ Ibid., vii, 1089-1091.

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⁵ Ibid., 1096-8.

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⁶ Ibid., vii, 1635 ff.

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As minor characters in this tragic story there appear strange naked ascetics, employed by Harṣa to remove the images from the temples. They are described as “naked wanderers with wasted noses, feet, and hands”,⁷ and as “broken (i.e. crippled) naked wanderers”.⁸ They were not satisfied with the mere removal of the images, but, acting on Harṣa’s instructions, they deliberately defiled them. “On their faces he had ordure and urine, etc., thrown by naked wanderers . . . in order to ruin the images of the gods. The forms of the gods, made of gold, silver, and other (metals), rolled like bundles of firewood in the dung-covered roads. Crippled and naked ascetics and others dragged the images of the gods, covered with spittle, by ropes tied to their ankles.”¹

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⁷ *Nagn’-āṭaiḥ śīrṇa-ghrāṇ’-āṅghri-pāṇibhiḥ*. Ibid., vii, 1092.

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⁸ *Rugṇa-nagn’-āṭakāḥ*. Ibid., vii, 1094.

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¹ . . . Vadaneṣu sa nagn’-āṭaiḥ\ *Mūrti-nāśāya devānāṁ śakṛn-mūtr’-ādy apātayat.* 1092.\ S . . . . . *rvāṇ’-ākṛtayo ’luṭhan*\ *iva sāvaskareṣv api.* 1093.\ ... ... ... *ā’ . . . . .* 1094. Ibid., vii.

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Harṣa’s deliberate pollution of the images was obviously inspired by some motive other than poverty. Stein, in a foot-note to his translation of this passage,² suggests that the king was influenced by Islām, and draws attention to two other verses in the poem in support. These are: “There was no temple in town or city which was not deprived of its images by Harṣarāja the Turk (*turuṣka*)”;³ and “He continually maintained with his wealth Turkish (*turuṣka*) captains of hundreds (and yet) the fool ate (the flesh of) village pigs until his death”.⁴

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² *Kalhaṇa’s Chronicle of the* . . . . . . . . , p. 353.

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³ *Rājataraṅgiṇī*, vii, 1095.

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⁴ Ibid., vii, 1149.

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These two references, only one of which refers to Harṣa as a *Turuṣka*, are inconclusive. The first verse employs the word metaphorically. It must be remembered that Kalhaṇa wrote when the memory of Maḥmūd’s pillage of Hindu and Buddhist temples was still fresh. The second verse merely states that Harṣa was not affected by Islām, at least in diet, despite his Turkish mercenary officers. The naked ascetics described in the *Rājataraṅgiṇī* cannot have been Muslims, who have never held that nudity is necessary for salvation. It is hardly likely that they were Jainas, who have never shown marked hostility to the Hindu gods, or (except in the case of the much later sect of the Sthānakavāsīs) to the use of ikons in religious ceremonies.

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These ascetics, whoever they were, clearly objected to the graphic or plastic representation of supernatural beings. We have no definite evidence that the Ājīvikas held such views, but the *Divyâvadāna’s* account of the Ājīvika or Nirgrantha who defiled a picture of the Buddha faintly suggests it.⁵ The story of Gosāla’s giving away his picture-board,¹ on abandoning the career of a *maṅkha*, may be a trace of an incident in the founder’s life which led to iconoclastic tendencies in the sect. If these feeble indications that the Ājīvikas opposed the use of religious images were the only argument in favour of their identity with Harṣa’s *nagn’-āṭakas* the evidence would be very weak indeed. There are, however, a number of other faint indications and resemblances which, if taken together, strengthen the probability.

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⁵ V. supra, p. 147.

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¹ V. supra, p. 40.

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We have already seen that Ājīvikas were to be found in Southern India, and Harṣa’s personal interest in the South is well established. Travellers from the Deccan were frequent in the north. The *Rājatarangiṇī* quotes a song, said to have been sung at Harṣa’s court, in which a traveller from the Deccan is told of the King’s desperate love for Caṇḍalā.² It is said that the fame of Harṣa’s liberality reached the court of Parmāṇḍi, where the poet Bilhaṇa, hearing of it, longed to return to his native country.³ A few years after Harṣa’s death we find the Gāhaḍavāla King Govindacandra patronizing a Buddhist monk Vāgīśvararakṣita, who came from the Coḷa country.⁴ Legends state that Rāmānuja visited Kashmir.⁵ Much evidence may be found to indicate close cultural and religious contacts between Kashmir and the Deccan at this period.

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² *Rājatarangiṇī* vii, 1123.

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³ Ibid., vii, 935–7.

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⁴ *Epi. Ind.* xi, pp. 20–6.

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⁵ De la Vallée Poussin, *Dynasties* . . ., p. 325.

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In such circumstances it is not impossible that a group of Ājīvika ascetics found its way to Kashmir from the Deccan and obtained the confidence of the king, who was always ready to patronize the purveyors of novelties, and seems to have had a taste for the bizarre. On the other hand Bāṇa indicates the presence of *nagn’-āṭas* of some sort in Northern Panjāb or Kashmir some 450 years earlier,⁶ and the ascetics may have been an indigenous and previously insignificant group of Ājīvikas who rose to prominence as a result of Harṣa’s patronage.

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⁶ V. supra, p. 168.

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The phrase *rugna-nagn’-āṭaka* used by Kalhaṇa may be compared to the phrases *nagna-bhagna* and *nagga-bhogga*, to which reference has already been made.¹ Unless these ascetics suffered from a disease such as leprosy they must have been ritually mutilated in some way. This suggests the Ājīvika initiation referred to in the *Jātaka*,² in which the novice had to grasp a heated lump of metal. Such an ordeal, if sufficiently protracted, might well fit the ascetic for Kalhaṇa’s epithet *śīrṇa- . . . pāṇi*. The same ceremony may also be connected with the name of Harṣa’s evil genius, Loṣṭadhara. From the name of his grandfather, Haladhara, he appears to have come from an orthodox Vaiṣṇavite family, but his own name ("Lump-holder") is very unusual, if not unique. Was this name connected with an initiatory ordeal, and adopted by its owner to mark his adherence to Ājīvikism?

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¹ V. supra, p. 105.

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² V. supra, p. 104.

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On his gold and silver currency, probably minted after the looting of the temples, Harṣa did not use traditional Kashmīr coin device of the seated goddess. The disappearance of the goddess is itself significant, and may be connected with the iconoclasm of the *nagn’-aṭas*. It is just possible that the elephant which replaced the goddess was an Ājīvika religious symbol. The elephant is, of course, the attendant of Lakṣmī, and has some symbolic significance in Buddhism; but it may well also have been an Ājīvika emblem. We recall the elephants of the façade of the Lomas Ṛṣi Cave,³ and the "Last Sprinkling Scent Elephant", one of the eight *carimāṃ* of the Ājīvikas.⁴

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³ V. supra, pp. 153–54.

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⁴ V. supra, pp. 68–69.

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Finally the "base ascetic" with whom Harṣa took refuge from the troops of Uccala has some Ājīvika characteristics. He lives with a prostitute, Bhīśca,⁵ and thus lays himself open to the same sort of accusations as were levelled at Makkhali Gosāla and his followers.⁶ His hut is near a charnel-ground (*pitṛvana*), where a necromancer (*siddha*) named Somānanda worshipped certain divinities called Someśvaras.⁷ We have already seen that the Ājīvikas appear to have performed tantric ceremonies,⁸ and are said by one source to have worshipped *piśācas*.¹ The sorcerer seems to have been in some way connected with the ascetic, whose hut has "a courtyard marked by him (i.e. by Somānanda or perhaps by them, the Someśvara gods), its site hidden by high trees".² This suggests the design on which the Ājīvika caves of Barābar were based, the round hut in the rectangular courtyard.³ Finally the name of the ascetic, Guṇa, is the same as that of a famous *acelaka* or Ājīvika teacher of the *Jātaka*,⁴ who propounds a fatalist atomism entirely consistent with the doctrines of the Ājīvikas.

Linked texts (3)

Rājataraṅgiṇī — Kalhaṇa, Sanskrit
Epigraphia Indica
Vikramāṅkadevacarita — Bilhaṇa, Sanskrit