History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c23.s1.87

c23.s1.87

We can feel no confidence in Buddhaghosa’s explanation of these three items. First in the catalogue of Ājīvika categories occurs the item, “ 1,406,000 *yoni-pamukha*,” which seem to be chief sorts of birth. On this interpretation the twenty-one classes of birth above are but a drop in the ocean of the *yoni-pamukha*, and seem quite unworthy of being placed in a category of their own. To this it might be objected that the *yoni-pamukha* represent species, while the seven members of each of the three above classes are genera. The three categories are followed by those of *deva*, *mānusa*, and *pesāca*, and it is therefore not impossible that this section of the list is an enumeration of the chief types of each category of living being, all of which are included in the *yoni-pamukha* at the head of the list. Thus the seven *saññi-gabbha* might well be divided in some such way as human, mammal, bird, reptile, fish, insect, and worm, and the seven *asaññi-gabbha* in a similar way. But Buddhaghosa must surely have been mistaken in his interpretation of the *niganthi-gabbhā*; we cannot believe that the larger grasses played so great a part in the Ājīvika scheme that they required a category to themselves. We would tentatively suggest that the *niganthi-gabbhā* were "those not bound", not in this case members of the Nirgrantha sect, but beings not so closely tied to gross matter as are mortals.¹ Thus the category of *niganthi-gabbhā* would link with the *devā* who follow, and correspond to the *satta sañjūhe* of the *Bhagavatī Sūtra* list, which we consider in the following paragraph. We believe that the *niganthi-gabbhā* were seven types of demigod, *yakṣa*, *apsaras*, etc.