History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c23.s4: Other Ājīvika Categories
History and Doctrines of the Ājīvikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c23.s4
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Other Ājīvika Categories
c23.s4.1
The Tibetan version of the Sāmañña-phala Sutta categories, according to Rockhill’s translation,³ differs somewhat from the Pāli. The list contains seven senses (sañjña), seven modes of existence as asuras, seven and seven hundred “kinds of writing”, seven and seven hundred “proofs”, 49,000 “of the garuḍa species”, ten “kinds of ranks”, and eight mahāpuruṣas. Of these the asura existences replace the nigaṇṭhi-gabbhā of the Pāli, which in Rockhill’s version become 49,000 of the nirgrantha species. It is possible that the obscure paṭuvā of the Pāli list are represented by the Tibetan “kinds of writing” or “proofs”, but neither of these is helpful in the elucidation of the Pāli term. The mahāpuruṣas evidently represent the purisa-bhūmiyo of the Pāli, which do not occur in the Tibetan list. The Tibetan totals sometimes differ from the Pāli, as does the order in which the items occur. The list seems to be even more corrupt than the Pāli version, and throws little fresh light upon it.
c23.s4.2
³ The Life of the Buddha, pp. 103-4.
c23.s4.3
A probable recollection of the Ājīvika list of categories is contained in Jiṇapaha Sūri’s Vihīmaggapavā.⁴ After the passage already quoted,⁵ mentioning Ājīvika begging practices, the text reads: “(According to) Gosāla’s instructions there are forty-nine times (*kālā*), beside which they declare 2,600 further (times), time by time.”¹ This fleeting reference appears to recall some of the contents of the original Ājīvika list, but *kālas* are not included in any versions known to us; *Nīlakēci* explicitly states that the Ājīvika does not recognize the category of time.² But the figure forty-nine occurs in the Pāli list, and the enumeration of the times is also suggestive of it. We can only conclude that Jiṇapaha Sūri had obtained a very fragmentary and garbled knowledge of the Ājīvika’s fantastic system of cosmological classification.
c23.s4.4
⁴ Weber, Verzeichniss, vol. ii, p. 870.
c23.s4.5
⁵ V. supra, p. 54, n. 4.
c23.s4.6
¹ *Gosāl’-āṇunnam . . . egūṇavannāsā kālā havanti; tad uvari sesāṇi chavvīsaṃ sayāṇi ekkekkeṇa kāleṇa vaccanti.*
c23.s4.7
² V. supra, p. 236.
Linked texts (3)
- Nīlakēci — Tamil
- Sāmaññaphalasutta — Pāli
- Viyāhapannatti — Sudharman, Ardhamāgadhī Prakrit