History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c23.s5.1

c23.s5.1

Time for the Ājīvika seems to have been infinite, containing an incalculable number of *mahāmāṇasa* periods. But the time spent by the soul during its passage through *saṃsāra* was finite, and limited to one *mahāmāṇasa*, or 8,400,000 *mahākappas*. “*Saṃsāra* is measured as with a bushel, with its joy and sorrow and its appointed end.”³ The soul passes through *saṃsāra*, and, after being reborn in many forms and conditions, and in various regions of the universe in regular and rigidly unalterable order; after passing seven times from one human body to another without dying; and after performing the suicidal penance of six months’ duration, it may reach the state of bliss beyond *saṃsāra*. It would seem, from an obscure passage in the *Bhagavatī*, that souls were sometimes fated by Niyati to reach the very threshold of the blessed state, only to fall and resume their wanderings through the cosmos. In the description of the final penance it is stated that on the last night of the ascetic’s life the gods Punnabhadda and Māṇibhadda descend and caress his limbs with their cool hands; if he resists or ignores their attentions he will be released from *saṃsāra*, his body consumed by spontaneous combustion; if he submits to them, he will “further the work of serpenthood” (*āsīvisattāe kammam pakareti*).⁴