Book Title: Mahavira His Life and Teachings
Author(s): Bimla Charn Law
Publisher: Luzac and Co UK

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Page 82
________________ TEACHINGS 75 vāda, and vinayavāda, but also from other types of kriyāvāda. As typical instances of akrıyāvāda, the Pāli Nikāyas mention the doctrines and views of four teachers, all of whom are associated with Mahāvīra as his notable contemporaries and as great leaders of Indian thought of that age. These are the very doctrines and views that find mention in the Jaina Sūtrakrtānga as types of akriyāvāda. The four teachers, according to Buddhist tradition, are Pūrana Kāśyapa, Maskarı Gośāla, Kakudha Katyāyana, and Ajita Kesakambali. The first of them is represented as a teacher who advocated a theory of chance to account for all actions of beings, while in the Sūtrakrtānga similar views are interpreted as a theory of the passivity of souls (niskriyāyāda) The second man is introduced as a dangerous fatalist both in the Pāli Nikāyas and in the Jaina Angas. The third man plays the rôle of an eternalist seeking to account for all phenomena, all happenings in the world by a mechanical combination and separation of seven factors in reality, the number being six as given in the Jaina Argas. The fourth man appears as a veritable atheist denying the possibility of Digha-N., I, pp. 47-48.

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