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Lord Mahâvîra
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given the honour of opening the Viy. itself (I 11= 13a), apparently was one of the greatest stumbling blocks to Mahâvîra's contemporaries. Not only was it flatly rejected by the anyatirthikas (I 101 section a= 102b), the same even denied the Theras to draw the most self-evident conclusion from it, e.g. (VIII 71=379a) to regard as their property something that had been given to them but did not reach them by some cause or other (as for instance the case described in VIII 62-374a). Even Mahâvîra's kinsman and disciple Jamali (IX-332-485a), as is well known, could not accept its truth, yea even the gods in heaven quarrelled about the validity of its implications (XVI 5=706a seqq.).
The 'irrevocable factum' principle shared that great popularity as a topic of debate and a basis for attacking the Jaina faith only with one other tenet, viz. the doctrine of the so called atthikayas. Unfortunately the two anyatirthika fragments dealing with it (VII 101-323b and XVIII 74 =705b) give very little information about its real tenor.12 The difficulty of the atthikaya theory, in my opinion, also appears from the fact that in both cases the people first addressed by the dissidents (among which there probably were Ajivikas as has been stated above) do not answer their questions at all: Goyama advises them to thrash out the question among themselves and Madduya only shows that certain things that lie beyond imperfect people's sensory perception (e.g. the fire in the arani wood) prove to exist all the same. What we gather from Mahâvîra' s explanation in the first of the two texts referred to only bears on the corporeal inanimate character of matter and the living incorporal essence of the soul as a basis for karmic retribution.
In conclusion I would like to state, that the great diversity of topics discussed in the anyatirthika texts is illustrative both of Mahâvîra's personality as a thinker and a teacher, and of that wonderful time of creative ferment in religion and philosophy that was his. It would seem that Mahâvîra, more than anyone around him, even more than the Buddha, was inspired by the spiritual unrest and eagerness of his day. Speaking of the Buddha, and probably, comparing him with the Jina, Frauwallner, in his History of Indian Philosophy, expressed the opinion that 'his (the Buddha's) contribution to the enlargement of the range of philosophical ideas in his time was a rather small one. 13 A severe
