Sambodhi 1980 Vol 09

Author(s): Dalsukh Malvania, H C Bhayani, Nagin J Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 63

The Main features of Mahāvīra's contribution
to take many more births to pay up due revenge. Speculation as such would not be then totally absurd. 6
The cause of vaira is necessarily action, and ārambha or injurious action is the conspicuous cause for inviting vaira. MV employed the word karma in terms of kriyā, i.e. deed or action in general including ārambha, which does not differ from the usage of this term made by his rival teachers in the other schools. MV must have identified the cause of vaira with kriyā thus he could easily adopt the then popular theory of karma in order to propagate the old doctrine of anārambha as the sole pathway for liberation.
The primitive belief in animism and vaira as such must have been widely prevalent in the aborigines in the remote antiquity in the Northeastern India before the advent of the Aryans. This primitive belief seems to have brought out two types of groups, one represented by the protoĀjīvikas and the other represented by the proto-Jainas. The living beings are doomed to commit violence to the other living beings in order to survive under the animist theory and vaira theory in question. This is the natural law, which easily opens a way to determinism or niyativāda. And Gośāla must have been the reformer of the doctrine of such protoAjivikas.7
This hypothesis is supported by the following reasons. As already touched upon, Gośāla believed in the animist theory and considered that the beings exist in the earth-body, water-body, fire-body and air-body, or in the form of vegetables and animals of which bodies are made up of these 4 mahābhūtas. The following topics are included in the Bhagavati VIII. 5 which discusses about the lay Ājīvikas : (1) The Ājivikas hold a principle that all the beings eat living beings, therefore they take it for granted that the beings survive by killing the other beings. (2) List of 5 forbidden fruits and 15 prohibited occupations involving violence to the beings. Also among the 6 classes of men, the worst class of men who have black leśyā are said to be those who live by slaughter and cruelty,8 The Ājīvika ascetics who went stark naked performed rigorous asceticism to the extent of absurdity, and their begging and dietary habits appear strikingly close to the Jainas.10
All this attests that the Ājivikas believed in non-violence based on the animist theory and vaira theory as MV did. 11 MV and Gośāla practised together for 6 years according to the Bhagavati XV, and if so, this they could have done for they commonly shared the basic background involving the principle of non-violence. It is likely that Gośāla