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Lord Mahavira
he sought out and reviled Mahâvîra, even using his magic powers to incinerate two of the Jina's disciples when they tried to oppose him. Finally he turned his power on Mahâvîra himself, accompanying it with a curse: "You are now pervaded by my magic forces, and within six months you will die of a fever. 55 But Mahâvîra's superiority and purity protected him; although he did become ill, he was able to cure himself. 56 As for Gosala, it is said that the evil power of his attack returned to its source; he became delirious and died soon afterwards in the workshop of Halahala.
Both of these tales, found in the Bhagavati-sutra, are unknown to, and thus rejected by, the tradition of the Digambaras. While they would clearly suppress, on the basis of doctrinal considerations, any notion of a perfected Jina engaging in worldly dispute, their nearly total lack of awareness of the significant place held by Makkhali Gosala in Mahâvîra's pre-enlightenment career is less easily explained.57 Perhaps the idea of a Jina-to-be associating so intimately with a heretic was repugnant to them. Other possibilities have been suggested by Hoernle and Basham. The former makes the rather sweeping statement that the Ajivikas were in fact themselves the earliest form of the Digambara movement; this idea seems to be based on certain similarities in the dietary practices of the two sects (for example, the lack of a begging bowl), as well as on the rather unconvincing premise (noted above) that nudity was introduced by the Ajivikas. 58 Basham's theory is more reasonable, suggesting that many Ajivikas were absorbed into the Digambara community in medieval times. 59
In either case, it might follow that the Digambaras would thus have quashed all reference to the "heretical” background of part of their community in order to ensure homogeneity and orthodoxy in the present; this phenomenon is common enough in cases.of conversion and assimilation. It would seem however, that we can understand the Digambaras' glaring omission of so important a figure as Gosala without resorting to such speculations. In their displeasure over certain portions of the codified canonical recension of Pataliputra, they probably rejected so much material as to leave themselves with virtually no canon whatsoever. This explanation also fits well with the Digambaras' extreme emphasis upon aspects of practice (especially nudity) rather than literature, for in the absence of ancient scripture it was finally only the code
