History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c22.s2.8

c22.s2.8

We have no information as to the process of thought which led to the emergence of the new doctrine of *Avicalita-nityatvam*, or a completely static universe. It was probably imported into the Ājīvika system by the school of Pakudha, which seems to have played a significant part in the formation of the doctrines of the Southern Ājīvikas. The doctrine could easily be harmonized with the determinism of Makkhali Gosāla, and is, in fact, a logical development of the latter. We conceive the train of thought which led the Ājīvika teachers of the South to accept the doctrine to have been as follows: If all future occurrences are rigidly determined and there is no room for novelty in the universe, coming events may in some sense be said to exist already. The future exists in the present, and both exist in the past. Time is thus on ultimate analysis illusory, and if so all motion and change, which take place in time, must be illusory also. Thus, we have almost arrived at the system of Parmenides.