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Lord Mahavira and His Times
hending mind can conceive in its various aspects. Hence the distinction which Kachchāyana made between the elements of being is in the view of Ajita untenable, the distinction being only an act of our mind. No such distinction exists in the living concrete individual taken as a whole.
Ajita's view was followed by Pāyāsi, and it was made more intelligible. The soul is not an entity distinct from the body. We cannot separate the soul from the body like him who draws a sword from the scabbard and says, “This is the sword and that the scabbard."2 We cannot say this is the soul and that's the body. Ajita and Pāyāsi viewed the corporeal from the point of view of the self on the ground that form cannot exist apart from matter.
THE MORAL DEDUCTIONS OF AJITA'S THEORY OF SELF
According to Mahāvīra, by denying future life, Ajita taught men to kill, burn, destroy and enjoy all the pleasures of life. The truth seems to be quite the contrary. He taught us to believe rather in life than in death and to show proper regard to persons when they are alive rather than honour them when they are dead. In another Jaina passage, we are told that Ajita was an Akriya-vādin, as he upheld the doctrine of non-Being. The study of the views of Silānka and Sāyaņa Mādhava leads us to believe that the foundation of Ajita's doctrine was laid in a statement of Yājñavalkya which is : the intelligible essence emerging from the five elements vanishes into them at death.4 SAÑAYA BELA?ȚHIPUTTA
Sanjaya Belaţthiputta was one of the religious teachers of the sixth century B.C. As is obvious from the Sāmaññaphala Sutta, he was a wanderer and the founder of a religious Order as well as of a school of thought in Rājagrha. He is believed to be identical with Parivrājaka Sanjaya, teacher of Sāriputta
1. Vedānta-sára (Ed. by COWELL), p. 32. 2. SBE, XLV, pp: 310-341; Dia. B, III, 368-361. 3. Ibid, p. 341. 4. BAPIP, p. 296.
