History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c24.s6.21

c24.s6.21

The Ājīvikism represented by *Maṇimēkalai*, and also by *Civañāṇa-cittiyār*, if we exclude the verse of the latter text referred to above, would seem to be that of a purer school, wherein the importance of Maṅkali is like that of Mahāvīra in Jainism and of Buddha in Hīnayāna Buddhism. The more orthodox terminology in the latter text, for instance the employment of the word *viṇai*, or *karma*,¹ and the absence of emphasis on determinism in this, the most recent connected account of Ājīvika teaching, suggest that one branch of the small Ājīvika community was in the fourteenth century merging with the Jainas. This is the substratum of truth in Hoernle’s theory, that the Ājīvikas and Digambaras were identical, and is the basis of the belief of such Tamil scholars as Schomerus, who, quoting Pope, believed that the Ājīvika atomic doctrines expressed in *Civañāṇa-cittiyār* were the product of an heretical Jaina sect.² We have reason to believe that other Ājīvikas were, from the days of Utpala onwards,³ drawing close to Vaiṣṇavism. No doubt the last followers of Makkhali Gosāla, the heretic of Sāvatthi, forgot their master for either Kṛṣṇa or Mahāvīra, according to the branch of Ājīvikism to which they belonged.