Some Aspects of Jainism in Eastern India

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

Page 134

106
Some Aspects of Jainism in Eastern India
these intolerable and difficult practices before going to be accommodated in the organisation.
Children were not debarred to get entry into the order provided they showed their forbearance in accepting various kinds and/or degrees of penances. A vivid description of an Ajīvika, named Jambuka while still a child, is to be found in the Dhammapada commentary.41 It is stated that the boy Jambuka was handed by his parents to a group of Ajivika ascetics and requested them for his initiation into their order. The boy was placed in a pit on which planks were set and the Ajivikas, seated on the plants, pulled out his hair with a piece of the rib of a palm-leaf (gala-ppamāṇe avāțe thapotvā, dvinnam jutrūnam upari padarāņi datvā, tesam upari nisīditva, tal'atthi-khandena kesa luñcinisu)."" The custom of practising severe penances, and pulling the hairs from their heads was prevalent among the early Ajivikas is attested by a famous Tamil Saivite text of the thirteenth century AD, Civaññāņa-citt'yär written by Arunandi Sivācārya.43
The Ajivikas were known as the followers of severe penance to the people of the Far East. In the Chinese and Japanese Buddhist literatures the Ashibikas (i.e. Ajīvikas)44 are placed together with the Nikendabtras or Nirgranthas. “They both hold that the penalty for a sinful life must sooner or later be paid and since it is impossible to escape from it, it is better that it be paid as soon as possible so that the life to come may be free for enjoyment. Thus their practices were ascetic-fasting silence immovability and ihe burying of themselves upto the neck were their expressions of penance.45 Of course, there are several other evidences depicting the Ajivikas with a pile of matted locks.96 Even Gośāla is said to have torn out his beard in his last delirium. Upaka and two other Ajivikas are depicted at Borobudur with carefully set hair.47 In fact, the identification cannot be taken as final and conclusive. What is important to note is that "the Ajīvikas were not always tonsured or cleanshaven. The extraction of the hair by the roots, like the grasping of the heated lump, was probably an ordeal intended to render the novice oblivious to physical pain, and to test his resolution, and, as with the Jainas, 48 was not usually repeated after initiation, or was only repeated at distant intervals."49
The inclusion of the female within the organisation of the Ājivikas was permissible. This can easily be deduced from the fact that the Ājīvikas while describing the six-fold classification of