History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c25.s4.1

c25.s4.1

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.