Jinamanjari 1996 04 No 13

Author(s): Jinamanjari
Publisher: Canada Bramhi Jain Society Publication

Page 13

Gosala taught a resigned attitude of endurance, since in his view the cycle was inalterable and there was no early escape. In that situation the ethical value of one's behaviour meant nothing; one was simply serving time. Mahavira, on the other hand, wished his followers to rely on their personal efforts and strivings for release, in part through increased ethical responsibility
The evidence suggests that Ajivikism was the older of the two traditions, indeed that Jainism may have been a puritanical reform group splintered off from the more primitive Ajivika root. The doctrine of a fixed cycle with no avenue of early escape may have been an older version of the doctrine than Yajnavalkhya's in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, which like Mahavira, stressed the ethical aspect of personal effort to gain release. 14
Gosala
The Ajivika teacher Makkhali Gosala was regarded as an antinomian because he rejected the doctrines of karma and ethical responsibility. Gosala was non-Aryan, perhaps Dravidian; Yajnavalkhya, the great Upanishadic articulator of reincarnationism, and Mahavira, who crossed the line between taboo and ethics, are both, in their traditions, said to have been Aryans of the kshatriya class.
The impersonal cyclical view of Gosala may have been revised into its supposedly ethical form when it was introduced into the teachings of an intrusive Aryan ruling class with a specific interest in controlling the behaviour of others through a severe ethical doctrine.
Nastika and Astika
At the time when the distinction between Ajivikism and Jainism was being felt and articulated, the various nastika
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