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Lord Mahavira's Religious Contemporaries and Sects
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NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE ASPECTS
Ajita was antinomian in ethics. It is remarkable that his categorical assertions are all negative in form. According to him, there is no merit in sacrifice or offering, no resultant fruit from good and evil deeds. No one passes from this world to the next. No benefit results from the service rendered to mother and father. There is no afterlifc. There are no ascetics or Brāhmaṇas who have attained perfection by following the right path, and who, as a result of knowledge, have experienced this world as well as the next and can proclaim the same.
There is no existence of individuality after death. The four elements of existence constitute a living body. When a man dies, carth returns to earth, water to water, heat to fire, air to air, and the sense faculties pass into space. It is a doctrinc of fools, this talk of existence after death, for all alike, the foolish and the wise are cut off, annihilated, and ceasc to be after death.1 Ajita in the negative aspect of his doctrine resembles Epicurus, while on the positive side of his speculations lic seems to be more a Stoic than an Epicurcan, his fundamental point being that nothing but the corporcal is real." DOCTRINE OF TAM-JĪVA-TAN-SARĪRA-VĀDA
Ajita's doctrine was described by Mahāvíra and Buddha as Tari-jiva-tari-sarira-vāda, in contradistinction to the doctrine of the soul being distinct from the body (Aññanijiva-aññai-sarīra-vāda). Ajita was not so much against the dogmas of the Bralımanic faith as against thc doctrine of Kachchīyana and others who made a hard and fast distinction between the body and the soul, beteen matier and spirit, in sliori, who conceived the soul as an entity cxisting independently of anything corporeal or material. Thus in one sense like a Stoic, hic identified the crorju.scal with the menial, and in another sense he did not. His in srition was not to identify the body with the soul,
j d soon. cepts, for what lie sought to establish was ina! t?r real hier experience is always a living wins, a whole whir! :17;é1. Dic!, B, 11. 73-74. :. Rutir, p. 2?!,
