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History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c25.s4: The Place of the Ājīvikas in Indian History

History and Doctrines of the Ājīvikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c25.s4

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The Place of the Ājīvikas in Indian History

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The position of the Ājīvikas in “ the general scheme of Indian history as a whole ” can best be understood by again looking at their origins. They emerged at a time when the whole civilized world was in intellectual ferment, which was expressed in India in the heretical non-brāhmaṇic sects, and the gnosis of the Upaniṣads. The reaction was in part a revival and restatement of pre-Āryan and pre-polytheist animism—an animism adapted to the high degree of material civilization already reached by its adoption of ethical standards and of speculative world-views, which were later worked up into metaphysical systems of great complexity and subtlety. Buddhism moved furthest away from this primitive animist background, but its humble ancestry may perhaps be traced in the doctrine of transmigration which it shared with all sects, and which appears by this time to have become a fundamental axiom of all Indian creeds. With the other creeds and sects the animist origins are clearer. The impersonal *brahman* of the Upaniṣads is probably derived not from the anthropomorphic polytheism of the Āryans, but from the belief in impersonal magical power, or *mana*, common to most primitive peoples. The doctrines of the Jainas and the Ājīvikas show further and stronger traces of the animist heritage. The conception of *dharma*, *adharma*, *sukha*, and *duḥkha* as in some sense material¹ is surely a survival of the primitive mentality, which is scarcely capable of conceiving an abstract entity.

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¹ V. supra, pp. 263, 267.

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The Ājīvikas show an even closer relationship to animism in their doctrine of the atomic nature of the soul, a theory but little removed from the soul-stuff theories of the savage, who viewed even the life of man as a solid substance. It is to the credit of the Ājīvikas that on this primitive basis they developed what was probably the earliest atomic theory of India; the concept of invisible and unchanging atoms is surely a manifestation of a rationally controlled imagination of a high order, and for this we must give credit to Pakudha Kaccāyana, the doctrines of whom, if not the name, were preserved by the Ājīvika sect.

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Similarly the Ājīvikas deserve credit for their doctrine of *Niyati*. This represents a very real recognition of orderliness in a universe on the human level apparently wholly unpredictable and disorderly. The same, it is true, may be said of the other new sects of the period, all of which, reviving in one way or another the Vedic concept of *ṛta*, but incorporating with it an atheistic or impersonal first principle, posited a framework of *karmic* cause and effect, within which the soul moved. It was for the Ājīvikas to drive this doctrine to its extreme conclusion, and replace the chain of causation, new links of which might be forged by the free will of the individual, by the single determining principle, *Niyati*, which denied free will altogether. The pragmatic value of this doctrine was slight, or even negative, but at least Makkhali Gosāla may claim the doubtful honour of anticipating by over two thousand years the now rather unfashionable world view of the nineteenth century physicist.

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It is nowadays not unheard of for the historian to attempt to find economic and material counterparts to philosophic and religious developments, and to give logical priority to the former. Thus the development of philosophy in Ancient Greece has been ascribed to the replacement of the tribal warlords of the Homeric age by a community of city states; with the disappearance of the chieftains and tribal kings the gods, who were their heavenly counterparts, appeared obsolete to the best minds of the times, and new speculative systems were devised to replace them. Similarly the rise of Protestantism in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has been attributed to the growth of a powerful commercial middle class, antagonistic to the ruling aristocracies, and demanding a new order in religion as in politics.

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While we cannot share the view that this theory of the development of philosophy and religion contains the whole truth, it may be conceded that the philosopher and the religious reformer may often be inspired, consciously or unconsciously, in their search for deeper insight by social, economic, and political change. It is possible to suggest a social and economic counterpart to the great wave of spiritual unrest which swept the Ganges valley in the sixth century B.C.

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The thirty-three great gods of the Āryans, and the lesser earth-spirits of the aboriginals, were too motley a company to correspond to the orderly civilization which had already emerged, while the martial and capricious character of the former, and the chthonic nature of the latter group of divinities, were inadequate to meet the spiritual needs of the rising class of merchants, to the existence of which both Buddhist and Jaina texts testify. We will concede to the historical materialist that Buddhism, Jainism, and Ājīvikism were to this extent a reflection of the changes in the social and economic pattern of the times.

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Among the three new cults Ājīvikism stands out for its thoroughgoing recognition of order in the universe. The cosmos of Makkhali Gosāla is immense in space and time, and ordered in every detail. The traditional cosmology, on the other hand, is an untidy confusion, wherein, for instance, the immediate cause of the monsoon is the victory of Indra over the cloud-dragon, and its ultimate cause the satisfactory performance of the sacrifices whereby Indra and the other gods are maintained. The earlier conception is only appropriate to a half-civilized tribal society. The efforts of the poets of the philosophical hymns in the *Rg* and *Atharva Vedas*, and of the brāhmaṇic thinkers who attempted to systematize the theory of the sacrificial cult, probably took place at the same time as comparable developments in the sphere of political and economic organization. The great efflorescence of religious thought coincided with the growth of large well-organized kingdoms in Magadha, Kosala, Kosambi, and Avanti.

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Of the various new doctrines propounded in the sixth century B.C., that of Ājīvikism, with its rigidly controlled cosmos, seems the most appropriate to a closely knit autocracy, and it is significant that it appears to have reached its period of greatest influence in the time of the Mauryas, when Indian government attained a higher degree of centralization over a larger area than at any other period before the nineteenth century. With the decline of centralized control, and the growth of smaller loosely knit kingdoms, to which lesser states were linked in quasi-feudal relationship, the sect waned in power, and ultimately vanished. The more orthodox concept of *karma*, which allows some scope for human initiative, seems more appropriate to such conditions than does the rigid determinism of *Niyati*. After the Maurya period central governments were by no means all-powerful; often indeed they were unable to maintain control in their outlying provinces; and the political unity of Bhāratavarṣa had vanished. The rapid decline of popular support for Ājīvikism, which seems to have taken place after the Maurya period, may perhaps be attributed to the unconscious conviction that Ājīvika cosmology did not fit the facts as they appeared on earth. It will be remembered that the sect survived longest in districts ruled by the Cola kingdom, where the political machine seems to have functioned more smoothly and efficiently than in most other parts of India.

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A further religious development, which affected the Ājīvikas, also shows a correspondence to contemporary political changes. While no monarch after Aśoka exerted so much power as he, the status of kingship rose from Mauryan times onwards. Aśoka, although "dear to the Gods", was a simple *rājā*. The Guptas, on the other hand, were emperors (*mahārājādhirāja*). In the succeeding epoch almost every independent king, however small his kingdom, adopted this or some such magniloquent title. The theory of the king’s divinity gained ground from Kushān times onwards. In the smaller kingdoms which succeeded the Mauryas, especially as the standards of bureaucratic administration declined, kings claimed a more exalted status and at the same time, owing to the smaller size of their kingdoms, their presence must have been felt more directly by their subjects. The impersonal principles of the heretical sects may have been appropriate to the less personal bureaucratic machine of the Mauryas, but they did not resemble the actual situation of later times, when power was usually vested in a single very exalted individual. Theism would be better suited to such a state of affairs, and theism did in fact begin to manifest itself as a significant element in the Indian religious situation at about the time of the break-up of the Maurya empire. Strengthened perhaps by survivals from popular chthonic cults, or even by ideas from the West, it developed throughout the Hindu period of India’s history, and, as we have seen, Ājīvikism itself was not unaffected by it.¹ Indian theism reached its final form when much of the land was in the control of alien monarchs, and when simple people must have been craving for the milder paternal despotism of such legendary rulers as Rāma and Vikramāditya. Thus the growth of devotional monotheism fits into the perspective of India’s political vicissitudes.

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¹ V. supra, pp. 276–77.

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We would not by this analysis maintain that the rise and decline of religious systems and sects are mere reflections of social conditions. They are, however, manifestations of human need. If they can no longer fully satisfy the needs of their adherents they will stagnate and die. But a religion is long in dying. It may obtain a new lease of life by a restatement of old verities in a more modern form, or by the introduction of new elements of belief. It may retain an attenuated and local existence long after it has outlived its period of general usefulness. And even when it is dead, some of its features may survive in a disguised form, incorporated into other systems, or maintained as folklore or superstition. Thus for a while Ājīvikism met the needs of a large body of adherents, but soon began to lose its vitality; it survived long in one region of India, incorporating new features into its doctrine; and it does not seem to have vanished without leaving some faint traces upon later Indian religion.

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So, tentatively, we answer Dr. Barua’s questions, and conclude our study of the Ājīvikas. Their long, but by no means glorious existence, has left but few traces, and we have only been able to reconstruct their history and doctrines in faint outline by extracting every possible hint from the material available to us. Even now it has been necessary to leave many questions unanswered, and large gaps in the structure of the history of the Ājīvikas are unfilled. But new information may yet come to light which may enable the structure to be strengthened. No work of history can have more than a provisional conclusion—the remainder of the History and Doctrines of the Ājīvikas is yet to be written.

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