Some Aspects of Jainism in Eastern India

Author(s): Pranabananda Jash
Publisher: Munshiram Manoharlal Publisher's Pvt Ltd New Delhi

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APPENDIX
On the Ājīvikas
The role played by the Ajīvikas in the history of the heterodox religious systems, in general, and Jainism, in particular, is unique as well as significant in many respect. It has already been brought into light that all the avaidika teachers belonged to the same age and the same region and they responded and reacted in their respective ways which were more or less similar to the same stimuli to stupendous socio-political and religious transformation. It is, thus, no wonder that the entire development of religion and philosophy in this period in the Gangelic Vallcy region, from Upanişadic gnosis to complete materialism, was bui a reflection of the non-Aryan reaction to the Aryan sacrificial system and to the rigid Aryan social order of the four varņas." In course of time these two distinct dominant traditions gave rise to innumerable cross-currents, sometimes completely losing their separate identity, and at other times merging in a confluence, only to re-emerge again in a new form and dimension, and flow in opposite directions. The religious history of India is, in fact, the history of the mutual influence of these two great traditions that resulted in the transformation of the Vedic religion of the Indo-Aryans into modern Hinduism.
While writing on the relationship between the Ājīvikas and the Jainas, Jacobi points out that “the greatest influence on the development of Mahāvira's doctrines, I believe, must be ascribed to Gośāla, the son of Makkhali."3 To have a proper understanding of the faith a brief survey on the origin and early history of the school and its organisation has been taken into consideration in the following
The word Ajivika seems to have derived from Ājīviya which means one who follows some rules with regard to one's liveli