History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c22.s1.1

c22.s1.1

The usual Buddhist criticism of the Ājīvika *Niyati* doctrine was pragmatic. Thus, the *Sandaka Sutta* of the *Majjhima Nikāya* ² condemns the four "antitheses to the higher life" (*abrahmacariya-vāsā*), which include the doctrines elsewhere ascribed to Makkhali, Pūraṇa, Pakudha, and Ajita. The fatalism of Makkhali entails the antinomianism of Pūraṇa. Since there is no possibility of modifying one's destiny by good works, self-control, or asceticism, all such activity is wasted. The Ājīvika doctrines are, in fact, conducive to luxury and licentiousness. This practical criticism of the Ājīvika philosophy might have been easily countered by the Ājīvikas with the claim that ascetics performed penances and led righteous lives under the compulsion of the same all-embracing principle as determined the lives of sinners, and that they were ascetics because *Niyati* so directed it. This very obvious argument occurs nowhere in the Buddhist scriptures, though it was known to the Jaina commentator Śīlāṅka, ³ who quoted it as one of the arguments used by *niyativādins*.