History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c22.11

c22.11

The process of regular and automatic transmigration seems to have been thought of on the analogy of the development and ripening of a plant. All beings were “developed by Destiny (*Niyati*), chance (*saṅgati*), and nature (*bhāva*).”⁴ This ripening process was completely predetermined, thus differing from the *pariṇāma* of the Sāṅkhya, wherein “evolution follows a definite law which cannot be overstepped (*pariṇāma-krama-niyama*), or in other words there are some natural barriers which cannot be removed, and thus the evolutionary course has to take a path to the exclusion of those lines where barriers could not be removed.”⁵ Sāṅkhya accepts the proposition that progress and change are rigidly limited by natural law. Ājīvikism goes further and declares that they are completely controlled.