History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c25.s3.28

c25.s3.28

It is also possible that Ājīvikism influenced the doctrines of Madhva and the Dvaita school of Vaiṣṇavism. Madhva has been said to owe much to early Dravidian Christianity,¹ and the parallels between Christianity and some of Madhva’s doctrines are certainly close. But we do not believe that the Syrian Christians of Malabar have ever maintained a rigid Calvinism which classed all souls in three groups, those destined for salvation, perpetual transmigration, and damnation respectively.² For this doctrine we can find no more likely prototype than the rigid determinism of Makkhali, especially when combined with the later Ājīvika doctrine of the *maṇḍala* and *sambodhaka* forms of salvation.³ Madhva seems to have taken Ājīvika determinism and recast it in the theistic mould. In fact it might be suggested that the whole school of salvation “on the analogy of the cat” (*pūṇai-campantam*), which arose in the Dravidian country with the growth of *bhakti*, owed much in inspiration to the originally atheistic Ājīvika doctrine of *Niyati*.