History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c5: Preface

History and Doctrines of the Ājīvikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c5

Language: English

Preface

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This is the first full-length study of the Ājīvikas, who, up to the present, have received little attention from students of Indian history and religion. Until the publication of Hoernle’s article in the *Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics*¹ there existed no connected account of the sect whatever, and the student in search of information was confined to brief references or appendices in works on Buddhism and Hinduism.² Hoernle’s article was the first to give a coherent summary of Ājīvika history and doctrine, as they appear in the Pāli and Jaina sources, but it contains a number of errors, notably in the theory that the term Ājīvika was regularly employed in the sense of Digambara Jaina, and that the former sect merged with the latter at an early date. Brief articles by Drs. K. B. Pathak and D. R. Bhandarkar³ criticized this conclusion. A further short article supplementary to that of Hoernle appeared in 1913 from the pen of Professor J. Charpentier.⁴

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¹ *Ājīvikas*, ERE. i, 1908, pp. 259–68.

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² V. bibliography in Hoernle, op. cit., p. 268.

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³ Pathak, *The Ājīvikas a Sect of Buddhist Bhikkhus*, IA. xli, pp. 88–89; Bhandarkar, *Ajivikas*, IA. xli, pp. 89–90.

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⁴ *Ajivika*, IA. xlii, p. 74.

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The next work on the subject was that of the late Dr. B. M. Barua.⁵ Dr. Barua stated that his reconstruction of Ājīvika doctrine required "a tremendous effort of imagination".⁶ He was perhaps too imaginative, for many of his assertions appear to be unjustified by the facts which he produces to back them, and some of his material seems not to relate to the Ājīvikas at all. Nevertheless his paper throws much valuable new light on the sect. Two further works of Dr. Barua should be noted; these are the chapter on Maskarin Gośāla in his *Pre-Buddhistic Indian Philosophy*,⁷ and a further consideration of the etymology of the term Ājīvika, published in 1927⁸; neither of these adds material of great importance to the author's main thesis. Also worthy of mention is an article by Dr. A. Banerji Sastri, which puts forward a new theory on the evacuation of the caves of the Barābar Hills by their Ājīvika occupants.¹

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⁵ Barua, *Ajivikas*, p. 22.

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⁶ Barua, p. 22.

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⁷ Chapter XXI, *Maskarin Gośāla*, pp. 297–318.

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⁸ *Ājīvika—What it Means*, ABORI. viii, pp. 183–88.

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¹ *J.B.O.R.S.* xxviii, pp. 174–62.

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The most recent work on Ājīvikism is that of Professor A. S. Gopani, which gives little new information, and appears to be written from the standpoint of an earnest Jaina trying to justify the historical accuracy of his scriptures.² This work mentions and summarizes a vernacular article by K. J. Karagathala,³ which is not available in this country.

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² *Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute*, vol. xxiii, pp. 47–59.

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³ *Jaina Prakāśa*, Utthāna, Mahāvīrāṅka (v.s. 1990), p. 82. Quoted Gopani, op. cit., p. 208.

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None of these works mentions the Tamil sources, which have been in part translated, but the significance of which for the study of the Ājīvikas seems to have been overlooked.

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In this study I have attempted, by a further examination of the better known sources, and by the use of material derived from sources hitherto untapped in this connection, to provide a more detailed and thorough study of Ājīvikism than has existed hitherto.

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While I may claim to have added something to the work of Hoernle, Barua, and the other authorities, the account presented in this work, based mainly on the passing references of the Ājīvikas' religious opponents, is inevitably fragmentary, and not always definite. To the lacunae in our knowledge must be added many uncertainties arising from contradictions in the sources themselves and from the imponderable but very real effect upon their authors of *odium theologicum*, which is usually clearly apparent, and which must often have led to exaggerations, and perhaps to deliberately false statements. This being the case I have frequently been compelled to state my conclusions in hypothetical or provisional terms. The reader is asked to forgive the many occasions on which such irritating words and phrases as "probably", "possibly", "perhaps", "it may be that", or "we may tentatively conclude", etc., occur in the text. Such provisional conclusions are inevitable in the study of a subject such as this, and most Indologists would agree that they are better than no conclusions at all, or than categorical assertions based on inadequate evidence. Although in this and in other respects my picture of the rise, development, and decline of the Ājīvika sect is still lamentably defective, I trust that my work will throw a little new light on an interesting and significant aspect of India's past, and will encourage further research.

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I must ask the reader's indulgence for certain very speculative paragraphs which have found their way into the final chapter. It is not for the research worker to usurp the privileges of the philosopher and theorize at length on the pattern of history. Nevertheless every facet of the world's history must stand in some relationship to every other and to the whole, and it seems to me to be legitimate, in a study of this character, that an effort should be made to establish such a relationship. Since history is not an exact science, any such attempt must inevitably be to some extent speculative. In the main body of my work I have attempted to keep firmly to my subject, and the digressions which from time to time occur, on such subjects as the age of a source, or the location of a town, should be found to have a significant bearing upon the main theme, or to be necessary for the full appreciation of its background. But, with the natural exuberance which arises with the knowledge of a long task nearing completion, I have allowed myself more latitude in the final chapter. The more speculative parts of that chapter, together with some passages of the introduction, I offer to the reader in the hope that they may stimulate him to further thought on the relation of religion and philosophy to sociology and politics.

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The more important passages from the sources have been translated or paraphrased in the course of the work. I have here and there allowed myself considerable liberty in translation, mainly with a view to rendering the passages in readable English, rather than in the Sanskritized style of a close translation. For the reader who wishes to refer to them I have included in footnotes the romanized originals of the most important phrases of these passages, whether Sanskrit, Pāli, Prākrit, or Tamil. I have usually broken up the longer compounds with hyphens, and as far as possible have simplified the junction of words by the use of the apostrophe to mark a dropped vowel or one which has coalesced with that following, and of the circumflex accent to mark vowels long by *sandhi*. Except in this particular the system employed for the Sanskrit passages is orthodox. In those Pāli texts wherein *ŋ* is used for *anusvāra* this sign has been regularly replaced by *ṃ*; otherwise the transliteration of Pāli passages is that of the Pāli Text Society. In all transliterations, *anusvāra*, when occurring within the word before any of the twenty-five *sparśa* consonants, has usually been expressed by the appropriate nasal letter; this, though it may offend some linguistic purists, is a common practice with modern Indian vernaculars, and avoids such ugly combinations as *Maṃkhali*, *aṃta*, etc. In Tamil transliterations I have used the rule-of-thumb system of the Madras University Tamil Lexicon. This has normally been adhered to even in the case of Sanskrit words occurring in Tamil, and in the Sanskrit titles of Tamil works, wherever *grantha* characters are not used in the texts to express them—thus *Civañāṉa-cittiyār* appears in the place of the more usual hybrid form *Śivajñāna-siddhiyār*. Occasional inconsistencies in these systems of transliteration, if found, are unintentional.

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In the hope that this work may be of some interest to students of religion and philosophy who have no special knowledge of Ancient India, I have included in the index a few brief definitions of less familiar Indian terms used in the text.

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I would express my sincere gratitude, affection, and respect to Dr. L. D. Barnett, of the British Museum Library, who has supervised the whole of my work, and whose unfailing assistance and encouragement have been invaluable. I am also much indebted to Mr. M. S. H. Thompson, who has willingly placed his profound knowledge of Tamil at my disposal for the elucidation of the ambiguous and elliptical Tamil sources. I would here also thank Mr. C. A. Rylands, Dr. W. Stede, and Professor H. W. Bailey, for their patient instruction in Sanskrit and Pāli during my years as an undergraduate; Professor C. H. Philips, and other members of the Department of History of the School of Oriental and African Studies, for encouragement and valuable advice on the technique of historical research; my colleague Mr. P. Hardy, for reading the proofs; and several fellow-students for occasional advice and help. I must also acknowledge the help rendered by Dr. V. R. Dikshitar, Professor of Ancient Indian History at the University of Madras, and by Dr. N. Lakshminarayan Rao, Government Epigraphist for India, in forwarding to me copies of two unpublished South Indian inscriptions. Finally I would thank my wife for great encouragement and for secretarial assistance.

Linked texts (1)

Barâbar