History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c23.s4.3

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.