History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c24.s6.1

c24.s6.1

In the course of the *Bhagavatī Sūtra*’s account of his last days Gosāla is twice said to have claimed for himself the status of the twenty-fourth and last *tīrthaṅkara* of the current *Avasarpiṇī* age.² The terminology of the phrase is distinctly Jaina, and the same words might equally well be applied to Mahāvīra. The Ājīvika system of chronometry, outlined elsewhere in the *Bhagavatī*,³ makes no mention of the Jaina *Utsarpiṇī* and *Avasarpiṇī*, or phases of universal development and decline. Furthermore the Buddhist description of the Ājīvika *abhijātis*, or spiritual colours, places only three individuals, not twenty-four, in the highest rank.⁴ Yet Jainism and Ājīvikism were so close in their origins, that it is possible that the two held a theory of *tīrthaṅkaras* in common. It is unlikely that the Ājīvikas, with their doctrine of immensely long *mahākalpas*, were content with only three *tīrthaṅkaras*, and twenty-four seems a more probable figure.