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१५६
अनुसन्धान-७०
sodof
ग्रन्थावलोकन
Piotr Balcerowicz, Early Asceticism in India Ājīvikism and Jainism. [362p., 20 figures, 1 table. London: Routledge, 2015 and New York, 2016. Hardbound. £ 90; $ 95.]
Review by Willem Bollée
After many preliminary studies the Warsaw Indologist herewith has given us a proper successor to Arthur Basham's up to now standard work on the Ājīvikas, which to a greater extent uses data from Buddhist than from Jinist sources. The disparity seems to have been dispelled with this new book in which the author (hereafter : PB) wishes to re-examine the relation between Pāsa ([U]pāśva[sena)'; “Pārsva”), Vardhamāna Mahāvīra and Gosāla Mankhaliputta, the older leaders known of the religious traditions in question. In the absence of Ājīvika scriptures we depend for their doctrines on Jain and Buddhist references. Gosāla's father may have been an itinerant bard who stayed for some time in a cow stall of the Brahmán Gobahula where Gosāla is said to have been born.?
In a table (p. 36) PB clearly pictures the complex relations between Gosāla and Mahāvīra, in which the former in the early Jain community was an important teacher, even
1 Bollée, Review of Kristi L. Wiley, Historical Dictionary of Jainism (2004). In: ZDMG 158,2 (2008): 507f.
2 PB appears to accept the meaning of the name Gosāla as born in a cow stall” (p. 35), which Reviewer) thinks odd and would rather take it to be a Māgadhism for “Gosāra, rich in cows' like Gobahula, the name of his landlord, or 'strong as an ox', for which cf. Gobala. Gosāla will not have been the only one born in a cow stall and that would therefore not be a reason to be called after.
