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Lord Mahāvīra's Religious Contemporaries and Sects
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169
VIEWS OF KAMMA
Gośāla's views on Kamma appear to have been peculiar, The classifications found in Sāmaññaphala passages are obscure, and Buddhaghosha sheds little light. From this it appears that once earned, the inheritance of Kamma was held to be independent of individual will and supposed to work its way out, along its own logic. From the statement just made, it appears that Kamma was considered to be in some way casually connected with Sukha-dukkha. How, then, was it supposed to be related to the triad of Niyatisangatibhāva ? Since individual initiative is denied, Niyati, probably, was considered to be the cause of Kamma prior to the attainment of liberation. Gośāla, in short, considered man bound to the cycle of rebirth by a force--Kamma or Niyati over which he had no voluntary control.
SIXFOLD CLASSIFICATION OF HUMANITY
Gośāla's classification of human beings into six abhijātis? (groups) according to their psychic colour is as follows: black (Kanha) includes all who live by slaughter and cruelty, such as hunters, thieves, fishermen and others ; blue (nila) contains ‘monks who live as thieves”; red (lohita) probably applies to all monks of Jaina type ; (4) green (halidda) scems to refer to Ajivika laymen ;(5) white (sukka) is related so Ājivika ascctics of both sexes; and (6) Supremely white (Parama-sukka) contains only three names, that is, those of Nandi Vachcha, Kisa Sankichcha, and Makkhali Gośāla. The 1bhijātis have much is common with the Jaina lešjās, and it is possible that both Gośāla and Mahāvira might have derived from some common source. By urging this doctrine, Gośāla wants to cmphasize that the supreme spiritual cffort of man consists in restoring the mind to its original purity, i.e., rendering it colourless or supremely white by purging it of all impurities that have stained it.
1. Disti, 1, 53 ; dico, III, pp. 359-54.
Sma:gala-Pilasini, I, p. 10. Voijh, I, p. 38.