History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c24.s4.13

c24.s4.13

Dr. Barua would go further than this. "The same chapter" (of the Bhagavatī Sūtra), he writes, "also points to an age when many Vedic and non-Aryan deities were affiliated to the Ājīviya pantheon, e.g. Punnabhadda, and Māṇibhadda, Sohamma, Sanakkumāra, Bambha, Mahāsukka, Aṇaya, and Āraṇa.” 1 We can only agree with him as regards the first two names, and that of Bambha or Brahma. Admittedly these names and some others do occur in the relevant chapter of the *Bhagavatī Sūtra*, but they are there spoken not by Gosāla, but by Mahāvīra,² who, after Gosāla’s death, prophesies that the soul of his renegade disciple will, after a long period of births in purgatories, attain divinity in the Jaina heavens; the names mentioned by Barua are merely those of some of the twelve Jaina Kalpas,³ and give no indication whatever of the divinities worshipped by the Ājīvikas. We have already seen that the Ājīvika classification of the heavens was very different. Therefore our attempts at reconstructing an Ājīvika pantheon must stop with Pūrṇabhadra, Maṇibhadra, and Brahma. Other gods there must have been, but we have no evidence of their names.