History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c24.s2.21

c24.s2.21

Of all the theories so far discussed that of Pakudha Kaccāyana seems to be the most primitive, the parent of the theories of later times, unless indeed the theory outlined in the *Sāmaññaphala Sutta* is itself the refinement of an earlier theory which admitted only four elements.³ Pakudha's atomic system was preserved in its purest form by the Ājīvikas, who at all periods of their history seem to have maintained the material nature of the soul, and who are more than once referred to in the Pāli Scriptures as holding Pakudha's theory. It has been suggested that Jaina, Vaiśeṣika, and Buddhist theories all look back to Pakudha,⁴ and hence to Ājīvikism. This view is probably correct. The subtleties and refinements are the work of the philosophers of the respective sects; but the conception of the world as divided into an enormous number of indivisible entities is the heritage of Pakudha, and of other nameless contemporaries and predecessors of the Buddha, who were loosely called Ājīvikas, and whose spiritual descendants merged with the school of Makkhali Gosāla.