Jaina Philosophy Historical Outline

Author(s): Narendra Nath Bhattacharya
Publisher: Munshiram Manoharlal Publisher's Pvt Ltd New Delhi

Page 198

A Comparative Study 177 him, started a Law of his own, and set up as a Jina, the leader of the Ājivikas. The Buddhist records, however, speak of him as the successor of Nanda Vacca and Kisa Samkicca and of his sect, the Acelaka paribbājakas, as a long established order of monks. We have no reason to doubt the statement of the Jains, that Mahāvira and Gosāla for some time practised austerities together; but the relation between them probably was different from what the Jains would have believed. I suppose, and shall now bring forward some arguments in favour of my opinion, that Mahāvira and Gosāla associated with the intention of combining their sects and fusing them into one. The fact that these two teachers lived together for a long period, presupposes, it would appear some similarity between their opinions...... The expression sabbe sattā sabbe pānā sabbe bhūtā sabbe jīvā common to both Gosāla and the Jains and from the commentary we learn that the division of animals into ekendriyas, dvīndriyas, etc., which is so common in Jain texts, was also used by Gosāla. The curious and almost paradoxical Jain doctrine of the six Leśyās closely resembles, as Prof. Leumann was the first to perceive, Gosāla's divison of mankind into six classes; but in this particular I am inclined to believe that the Jainas borrowed the idea from the Ajīvikas and altered it so as to bring it into harmony with the rest of their own doctrines. With regard to the rules of conduct the collective evidence obtainable is such as to amount nearly to proof that Mahāvīra borrowed the more rigid rules from Gosāla."
Prof. Basham has found out a number of Ājīvika terms and concepts from the Buddhist and Jain texts and their commentaries bearing on the doctrines of the Ajīvikas.? We shall refer to them in brief which will show the nature of influence which Ājīvikism exerted on Jainism and also the latter on the former. It is impossible to enter into a discussion owing to the fragmentary nature of the data we possess at the the present state of our knowledge. In the Sāmaññaphala-sutta of the Buddhist Dīgha Nikāya and Buddhaghoșa's Sumargala-vilāsini which is a commentary on it, in the Anguttara Nikāya and in the Jain Bhagavati sūtra we come across the Ajivika concepts like Yoni-pamukha, womb or birth; Karma, their number and classification; Pațipadā, paths (Cf. majjhima-pațipadā of the Buddhists); Antara-kappa, ages of the world; Abhijāti or classes of men; Purișa
1SBE, XLV, introduction XXIX-XXX. *HDA, pp. 240 ff.