History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c9.s1.3

c9.s1.3

Ājīvika determinism emerged, together with the atomism with which it was later associated, in conditions of rising civilization in the Ganges valley, when political power was rapidly being consolidated. By the sixth century B.C. at least part of India had enjoyed some two thousand years of urban culture. The industrious and uninspiring civilization of the Indus cities, with its chthonic religion, had been replaced by the more barbaric culture of the Āryans, with a disorderly pantheon of celestial deities. The Āryans, no doubt heirs to the residuum of the Indus civilization, gradually expanded southwards and eastwards from the Panjāb. By the tenth century B.C., when they had occupied Kurukṣetra and the Doāb, the first steps in philosophical speculation had been taken, and sceptics were already asking whether it was possible to know the ultimate basis of the universe.¹ But at this period of small tribal kingdoms most of the mental energy of the best minds seems to have been devoted to a sterile effort at providing a satisfying symbolic interpretation of the elaborate and costly sacrificial rituals of the time.