History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c21.s1.1

c21.s1.1

The contempt in which the Ājīvikas were held by their opponents does not conceal the fact that the sect possessed a fully elaborated system of belief, and that it produced its own philosophers and logicians, uninspired though they may have been, whose works and names are unfortunately lost to us. Moreover, it seems that Ājīvika doctrine, like that of Hinduism and Buddhism, did not remain static during the two millennia of the sect's existence, but developed by a process comparable to that by which the Mahāyāna system emerged from early Buddhism.