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misadventures to a sceptical critic. A self-proclaimed omniscient person who enters an empty house for alms should have known beforehand that the house is empty, so why does he enter it? The only justification possible would be to maintain that this particular excursion had not been inspired by the incorrect belief that there were people in the house, but was rather determined by a pre-existing set of rules. The omniscient person entered the empty house because he had to enter it. Strict determinism makes even an omniscient person behave like an ordinary one.
Ananda does not react to the reply of the omniscient teacher, leaving the impression that he finds this reply totally unconvincing and ridiculous. However, it is no more ridiculous than the idea of omniscience. It might even be maintained that it is practically impossible for a human teacher to seriously claim omniscience without at the same time maintaining that human behaviour, including his own, is subject to deterministic rules. How else would he account for his mishaps, whether in the form of absence of almsfood and biting dogs, or elephants and other wild animals that cross his way?
Strict determinism is not normally associated with Jainism. It is a feature of the teachings of Makkhali Gosala, probably one of the saints of "real" Ajivikism, as we have seen. It is not commonly associated with the Jainas, but the present passage from the Sandaka Sutta shows that it may very well have been part of the early teachings of this religion. One might conjecture that determinism had an important role to play in the days when Mahāvīra was still alive and in the then following period during which the human behaviour, including errors, of the omniscient leaders of Jainism were still part of collective memory. With the subsequent idealisation of the omniscient sages of Jainism. elements of behaviour that might be taken to be in conflict with their omniscience disappeared, and with them the need for determinism as a means to explain them. What is more, determinism may have started to be felt as a limitation to the power of a Jina.
Determinism, if it did indeed characterise early Jainism, would not be the only feature it shared with Ajivikism. The similarity between the six "colours of the soul" (lesya) of the Jainas and the six abhijātis of the Ajivikas has often been commented upon.54 It does not really matter here whether Jainism borrowed these notions from Ajivikism (as has often been maintained), or vice-versa, or both from a common source. This shared feature can be taken as an indication that there may have been others. Determinism may have been one of them, and again it is not necessary (nor indeed possible, it would seem) to resolve the
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question who borrowed from whom. The link between omniscience and determinism, suggested above, may have made the latter doctrine particularly attractive for all self-proclaimed Jinas.
Our reflections lead us to the following tentative two-fold conclusion. It seems likely that the Jainas (nirgrantha) and Ajivikas mentioned in the Buddhist canon are not simply two distinct and clearly delineated religious movements that existed at the time of the historical Buddha. The situation may have been more complicated. The term Ajivika may have been used for more than just one religious, movement, and may indeed have covered the followers of Mahavira beside "real" Ajivikas and various other religious wanderers. The feature they all shared was nakedness, but this may have been the only feature they all had in common. On the other hand, one passage in the Buddhist canon suggests that the doctrinal position of the early Jainas may have been less distinct from that of the "real" Ajivikas than has often been supposed. Both may have adhered to a strict determinism, a position which was eminently useful to explain the human shortcomings of their "omniscient" leaders.
NOTES
1
This article confines itself to the Buddhist canon in Pali. No attempt has been. made to include Buddhist canonical passages preserved in other languages.
The PTS edition never seems to have niggantha, in spite of PTC s.v. "nigantha and niggantha". Does this explain the question mark at PTSD s.v. nigantha: "nis-ganthi is the customary (correct?) etym."?
The Pali canon (at least the PTS edition) more often uses the term ajivuka. Where I am not directly quoting the texts, I will always use 'Ajivika', which is the term that has become current. all the more so since it occurs in the title of Basham's important book on the topic (1951).
4
Cp. Dundas, 1992: 22 (diacritics and emphases added. "There is no knowledge of Mahavira's given name Vardhamana in the earliest stratum of the biography and the use of the epithet Mahavira as a personal name, while occurring in the first book of the Sutrakṛtanga, is unknown in the first book of the Acatanga. Furthermore, the oldest texts never use the term 'fordmaker and very seldom jina, the word which gives Jainism its name. Instead we find terms such as Nuvaputta, son of the Nayas. an obscure expression which seems to refer to Mahavira's clan. called in Sanskrit Jñar, and the name by which he is known in early Buddhist writings..." Cp. Dhaky. 1991. Adelheid Mette has made the suggestion that these different names and epithets did not necessarily refer to one and the same person in earliest Jainism; see below. An exception is Jacobi, 1895: xv: "...it is still open to doubt whether the religion of the early Nirgranthas was essentially the same as that taught in the canonical and other books of the present Jainas, or underwent a great change up to the time of the composition of the Siddhanta. In order to come nearer the solution of this question. it may be desirable to collect from the published Buddhist works, as the oldest witnesses we can summon, all available information about the Niganthas.
