History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c9.s1.21

c9.s1.21

On the other hand the Indo-European peoples may have entertained a belief in an inevitable destiny at a very early period. Admittedly the hymns of the *Rg Veda* do not suggest a fatalistic attitude to life. One’s destiny is influenced by propitiating the gods, who are the arbiters of human fortune, and can be induced to show favour, or to relent in their anger. This seems to have been the general priestly theory of all the Indo-European peoples in the earlier stages of their development. But there is evidence of another line of thought. Though a wholly fatalist attitude may not be found in the religious tradition, as depicted for instance in the *Rg Veda*, such an attitude does appear in the martial tradition of the epics. Widespread in Indo-European epic literature is the hero who, well knowing that he and his comrades are fated to defeat and death, goes boldly into battle because it is “the thing to do”, the right and natural conduct of the warrior. As examples of this doomed warrior we may cite Karṇa in the *Mahābhārata*,¹ both Hector and Achilles in the *Iliad*,² Hagen in the *Nibelungenlied*,³ and Ferdiad in the Cuchullain Saga.⁴ No doubt other examples may be found. From its widespread occurrence it seems probable that this grim tradition of the doomed hero was known to the Indo-European peoples before their separation, and we may infer that it existed in India long before the final recension of the Mahābhārata. May it have had any influence on the development of Ājīvika fatalism? In eastern India at the time of Makkhali Gosāla were vrātyas, bands of nomadic Āryans who had fallen away from the priestly religion, and might be received back into the Āryan fold only after purification ceremonies.¹ Their chief centre was Magadha, a kingdom which Makkhali Gosāla visited in the course of his wanderings with Mahāvīra before his “enlightenment”.² At that time Magadhans were famous as bards,³ and sang the martial songs out of which the epic tradition grew at the courts of chieftains all over Āryāvarta. Makkhali Gosāla, before his association with Mahāvīra, was, according to the Jaina story, a maṅkha; this word is equated by Hemacandra with māgadha, a bard.⁴ Thus a very slender chain of relations connects the founder of Ājīvikism with the Āryan fatalist tradition, and his determinism may in part have been inspired by ideas derived from the renegade Āryan singers of martial songs.