Mahavira and his Teaching

Author(s): C C Shah, Rishabhdas Ranka, Dalsukh Malvania
Publisher: Bhagwan Mahavir 2500th Nirvan Mahotsava Samiti

Page 117

110
PADMANABH S JAINI
from [the mire of] transmigration. Like Makkhali Gosāla and others they become the food for the fire of lower and lower hells."1
The choice of Makkhali Gosāla to illustrate an 'abhavya' may not be purely accidental. It is quite likely that both the Buddhists and the Jains considered such mithya-dịšțins as totally 'incurable', the number of whom might have been very small, as the word kascit2 employed by Asarga to indicate the hetu-hina (=agotrastha) beings would seem to indicate. In the course of time, the class of such beings who were doomed for ever might have developed into the category of the abhavya in Jainism and the agotrastha in Mahāyāna Buddhism.
The early Buddhists, in keeping with their well observed habit, seem to have refrained from theorising on these cetegories. The Jains on the other hand, being more ancient and much more closer to the Ajīvikas, appear to have pushed the belief in the categories of bhavya and abhavya to its logical conclusion. The fact that the Buddhists were content to leave the number of the abhavyas undefined and that the Jains replaced this unspecified and arbitrary number with infinity
'sakim nimuggos ir ekavāram nimuggol 'ekanta-kālakehi' tr ekanten, eva kālakehr natthikavāda-ahetukavāda-akırıyavādasamkhăteh niyata-micchäditth-dhammehr/ evam puggalo .. nimuggo va hoti/ etassa hi puna bhavato vutthānam nāma natthi tt vadanti/ Makkhalı Gosalādayo viya hetthā hettha naraka’gginam yeva ahārā hontil Puggala-paññatti-Atthakatha, VII, 1. See fn. 3(b), p. 106.
The Kathavatthu contains many controversies allied to the topic of the kusala-müla-samuccheda and sandhāna See kappattha-katha, niyatassa niyāmakathā, accanta-niyama-katha, etc The Uttarāpathakas are accused of entertaining a belief somewhat similar to the Yogācāra doctrine of the ago trastha.