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Lord Mahâvira
accept him as his disciple and the two then wandered together for a period of six years. Makkhali Gosala proved to be an unsatisfactory pupil, both headstrong and jealous of his teacher's ascetic attainments, trying fruitlessly to disprove Mahâvîra's powers of prescience and on one occasion having to be rescued by the fordmaker from a brahman ascetic whom he had antagonised. The expanded version in the Universal History describes other episodes of this sort.
Eventually, according to the 'Exposition of Explanations', Makkhali Gosala, after gaining a degree of magic power from his association with Mahâvîra, left his teacher and falsely proclaimed himself to be a spiritual conqueror. Furious at Mahâvîra's refusal to acknowledge his status, he attacked him with a blast of ascetic heat which he released from his body, but such was the adamantine nature of Mahâvîra's physique that it rebounded back upon Makkhali Gosala who eventually died after confessing that the fordmaker was a true spiritual teacher. Mahâvîra subsequently predicted that Gosala would eventually attain enlightenment and spiritual release.
The Ajivikas were undoubtedly a fully fledged ascetic corporation in their own right with a community of lay supporters and there is evidence that they were still in existence in south India as late as the thirteenth century. However, the precise nature of Makkhali Gosala's doctrine remains unclear. The account of it found in early Buddhist literature credits him with propounding an elaborate if obscure cosmology and of arguing that fate or destiny (niyati) was the central motive force in the universe against which no human effort could have any effect. All later accounts of Ajivika doctrine echo this description. In the absence of any Ajivika writings, any conclusions must remain speculative, but it seems doubtful whether a doctrine which genuinely advocated the lack of efficacy of individual effort could have formed the basis of a renunciatory path to spiritual liberation. An examination of the 'Sayings of the Seers', which counts Makkhali Gosala among the authoritative teachers, suggests that he was in fact simply arguing for the virtue of imperturbability in the face of the continued change and modification which were to be seen in the world (IBH 11).
The suspicion must be that the Jains and Buddhists
