History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c4: Foreword by Dr. L. D. Barnett
History and Doctrines of the Ājīvikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c4
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- English
Foreword by Dr. L. D. Barnett
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Both in religious and in social life movements of extreme intensity are apt to engender opposite forces. This rule of human nature is strikingly exemplified by the development of religion in Ancient India. Here history began with the dominance of Vedism, a group of polytheistic cults autocratically engineered by the Brāhmaṇs, who vigorously claimed that the welfare and indeed the very existence of the world, including even the gods, depended upon the maintenance of their systems of sacrifice, which grew to immense size and complexity. Dissent from this crude creed first appeared in the Upaniṣads, in which a few liberal-minded Brāhmaṇs, perhaps supported by some of the military aristocracy, put forward speculations of an elementary monistic idealism, while leaving the edifice of Vedism intact for the use of the unenlightened. But a far greater peril to Brāhmaṇic ritualism arose about this time, and spread far and wide, affecting some few of the Brāhmaṇs themselves; for now the very foundations of Brāhmaṇic orthodoxy were uncompromisingly denied, and preachers of what they claimed to be new and true doctrine arose on many sides. This radical movement assumed many phases. In some circles, Brāhmaṇic and non-Brāhmaṇic, it appeared in the form of a coarse atheistic materialism associated with the name of Cārvāka. Elsewhere it took a less crude shape. Among the aristocratic clans of the North two noblemen came under its influence, and created great churches: they were Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, and Mahāvīra Vardhamāna, whom the Jains revere as their twenty-fourth Tīrthaṅkara. But besides these and some other less successful leaders of gentle birth there was a multitude of men of humble origin noisily preaching their heresies in various wise; and among these the Ājīvikas played a part of some importance, if not of great glory.
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The history of this queer sect is reconstructed by Dr. Basham in the following pages with much skill and scholarly thoroughness. As he shows, their reputation has been somewhat unfairly blackened by the *odium theologicum* of their rivals, the Buddhists and the Jains; and they deserve some credit for the obstinate consistency and intellectual honesty with which they clung to their doctrine of predestination, to the exclusion of all other principles. Logically, of course, one may ask how believers in that dismal creed can submit themselves voluntarily to self-torture and even to death in pursuance of it. But man is not a logical creature: he does not abstain from effort although he may believe the issue to be predetermined, as the example of Calvin and his Church shows.
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For a long period, extending from early classical times to the middle of the Medieval period, our knowledge of Ājīvika history is a blank, for no records of those years have survived. Then the curtain rises again, and we find abundant documents in inscriptions of the Tamil and Kanarese areas and in a few works of southern literature. These show that in the intervening centuries the Ājīvikas had undergone changes such as are usual in the development of Indian religious bodies: the little congregation had hardened into a caste-community of considerable size, and the figure of its founder had assumed features of divinity. The story that is here narrated is indeed a highly interesting and instructive chapter in the vast record of Indian thought.
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L. D. BARNETT.