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The Fordmakers
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deliberately distorted Ajivika doctrine for their own polemical purposes. Furthermore, it may well be that the developed biography of Mahâvîra could not easily dispense with Makkhali Gosala from its narrative structure because there was a persistent reminiscence of a genuine historical connection between the two, and there remains the possibility that Mahâuîra and early Jainism were influenced by the Ajivikas. There are, for example, inconsistencies in Jain karma theory which could be explained with reference to what little is known of Ajivika doctrine.22
Mahâvîra's Relationship With Parshva
In the Kalpasutra there occurs the first description of the life of Parshva, the twenty-third fordmaker, extremely short in extent and probably modelled on that of Mahâuîra. Parshva is stated to have been born in Benares, to have renounced the world and founded a community of ascetics and lay people and, after a life of one hundred years, to have attained liberation on Mount Sammeta in the Ganges basin two hundred and Fifty years prior to Mahâuîra. Circumstantial evidence, including a description of his teachings in the 'Sayings of the Seers' (IBh 31), dictates that he must be viewed as a historical figure. While the Kalpasutra does not formally link Parshva to Mahâvîra placing his biography after that of the last fordmaker, a passing remark in the second chapter of the Acaranga, that is, not in the very earliest stratum of the biography, that Mahâuîra's parents were followers of Parshva and lay devotees of Jain ascetics (AS 2.15), has led to the general scholarly conclusion that Mahâvîra must have renounced within Parshva's ascetic lineage.
The question of the relationship between the two fordmakers hinges on the fact that Jain tradition holds that Parshva and his ascetic community followed a Fourfold Restraint (Prakrit caujjama). A definition of what this might be does not occur until about the second or third century CE when the Sthananga, one of the encyclopaedic texts of the Shvetambara canon, states that the fourfold vow involves abstention from violence, lying, taking what has not been given, and possession (Sth 266). Mahâvîra, on the other hand, according to tradition preached, or rather stipulated as a mode of ascetic initiation, five Great Vows (Prakrit mahavvaya), not seriously dealt with in the earliest stratum of the
