Ajivika

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Ajivika Author(s): Jarl Charpentier Source: The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, urnal of the

Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (Jul., 1913), pp. 669-674Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25189032Accessed: 26-02-2016 09:12 UTC

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AJIVIKA 669

on the corresponding Kushan coins, which substitute the

title f>AO or f>AONANO JM0.1 The Kushan lettering

appears to me better cut and less barbaric than the

Elamite?a fact which is not strange, since the Greek

population in Elam and Persis was at all times very small.

But the close connexion of the Kanishka Greek alphabet with that in use in Ely mais and Characene is incontro

vertible. Equally noteworthy is the preference of these

Elamites and Kushans for Greek instead of the popular Aramaic and Prakrit. I have been asked why Kanishka

put Greek legends, and Greek legends only, on his copper

coins, as well as on his gold. I can only answer that his

Elamite contemporaries did the same.

J. Kennedy.

Ajivika

In his admirable treatise upon the Ajivikas in Hastings'

Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, i, p. 259 seq., Dr. Hoernle writes as follows : "

On the exact signification of the name '

Ajivika' we have no information." However,

he thinks it probable that the name was not originally taken up by the followers of the heresiarch Gosala them

selves, but was from the beginning a nickname given to

them by their opponents and meant to denote them as

practising ascetic rules only as a means of gaining a

livelihood (djiva). So ajivika would mean " professional

"

or something like that.

It cannot be denied that this seems to be the most

probable explanation of this rather obscure word. Nor

do I pretend to be in a position to offer a better one. But

1 I have compared, with Mr. Allan's assistance, some of the coins of Phraates in the British Museum with the Kushan. The only distinctive letters I could find common to both were the alpha and epsilon. The

Kushan letters appeared to me sharper and more angular ; more

italianated, as our writing masters would have said. The epsilon in

particular sometimes resembled a cuneiform wedge, a form which is

occasionally found in Egyptian graffiti.



670 AJIVIKA

I think it is at least highty probable that the term in

question goes back to a more remote antiquity than that

of Gosala, who was, as is well known, the contemporary of Mahavira the Jina and Gotama the Buddha.

The verb d-jiv- we meet with at first in the Mahabharata,

but the noun djiva-, "

livelihood," " mode of life," occurs

in texts certainly much older than the great epic poem.1 So we find sarvdjiva- in the Sveta^vatara Up., i, 6, and

saonyag-djiva- (cf. sammd-djlva-) is well known to

designate one of the stations of the "

noble eightfold

path "

in the sacred lore of the Buddhists. In Buddhist

scriptures, too, djlvika as the name of heterodox ascetics

is frequently met with, e.g. Vinaya Pitaka, i, 8 = Majjh.

Nik. i, 170; Vin. Pit. ii, 130, 284, etc.; but the name of

Gosala is not mentioned in connexion with it. It is only from Jain canonical books that we learn that Gosala was

the head of the djlviyas mentioned there. As for the

epigraphical mentions of the word djlvika, the first of

which date from the time of Asoka and his successor

Dasaratha, they have been dealt with at length by Dr. Hoernle in his treatise, p. 266 seq.

Now the founder of the sect of the Ajivikas is, as is

well known, called by the Jains Gosala Maooikhafyiutta, and by the Buddhists Makkhali Gosala (Skt. Maskarioi

GoSdla or Gosdlikdputra). That Gosala was his real

name, aud makkhali (: manikhali)2 = onaskaonoi denotes

him as belonging by birth to a certain sect of mendicant

friars, has been shown at length by Dr. Hoernle. He goes on to state that onaskarin means an ascetic carrying a single bamboo-staff (inaskara), and that Gosala there

fore belonged to the sect of mendicants usually called

eka-dandins, who were, as we know, orthodox Saivas.

1 Of course, I owe tho following indications to the St. Petersburg

Dictionary and to the article by Dr. Hoernlo already mentioned. * Makkhali, because of the change of r into I, must, of course, belong

to an Eastern dialect, probably the Magadhi.



AJIVIKA 671

The early existence of such mascara-carrying monks is, as Dr. Hoernle points out, ascertained not only by the

name Mamkhalipntta, but also by Panini vi, 1, 154

(maskaramaskarindu vennparivrdjakayoh), where he

explains the formation of the word maskarin.1 And

Mamkhalipntta may, of course, be regarded as a noun

of the same kind as Nigganthaputta or Sdkiyaputta, names of the followers of Mahavira, the Niggantha, and

Gotama, the great ascetic of the royal house of Sakyas. But this statement, being quite clear to us, seems not to

have been so to the author of the Bhagavatisutra (p. 1204 ; v. Dr. Hoernle's Uvasagadasao, App. i, p. 1); for he states

that Gosala was called Mamkhalipntta, as being the son

of Mamkhali, a mamkha or wandering mendicant.

Abhayadeva explains mariikha as being " a mendicant

who tries to get alms from the people by showing them

pictures of (malignant) deities which he carried about

with him ".2 Now?to go further with Dr. Hoernle?

there is no real word mamkha that could make good this

explanation; moreover, the real meaning of that presumably invented word was not very clear to Abhayadeva and

Hemacandra. So we must surely put this explanation aside and hold to the view that Gosala's father was rather a maskarin, a mendicant carrying

one staff of bamboo, an

eka-dandin. But I think that if the word mamkha was

really only a blunder of Abhayadeva, his statement con

cerning the carrying of a picture of a certain ugly

looking deity might be quite right, as I hope to show

in the following. From Panini, v, 3, 99 (jivikdrthc cdpamje), and the

explanations of Patanjali and others, we learn thata picture of Siva or some other deity3 that wras fabricated for sale

1 As for Patanjali's explanation of this sQtra (M.Bh. iii, p. 90) see

Weber, Ind. Stud, ii, 174 f., quoted by Dr. Hoernle. 2

Hemacandra in the commentary upon Abhidhanaciutamani, v, 795, says that mamkha was =

magadha, "a bard." 3

Pataiijali mentions Skanda and Visakha too.



672 AJIVIKA

should be called Sivaka, while another picture of the same

god carried about by a devalakal and shown to the people for earning money was called simply &iva. I do not

wish to enter into an investigation of these grammatical subtleties and their various explanations, which have been

fully discussed by the late Professor Ludwig in a paper inserted in the Festgruss an R. von Roth, p. 57 seq. But

I wish to lay stress upon the fact that according to this

sutra Panini must have been well accustomed to the

profession of carrying about idols for the purpose of

earning money. And such a mode of life must have been

rather traditional at his time, as the grammarians had

already been able to make such nice distinctions as to the

various uses of e.g. Siva and Sivaka, when the words

were used to denote these pictures. I think it rather

clear that the explanation of Abhayadeva quoted above

points to the same fact as is told by Panini. And if, as

seems highly probable, we must fix the date of the famous

grammarian at an earlier period than has been done

hitherto we might suppose that his statement may be

nearly contemporary with the life of Gosala.

Now, it is of interest, too, that just Siva should be used

here for exemplifying the rule of Panini, and that the

other examples are Skanda and ViSdkha, who are both

very closely connected with Siva. For from these

indications we might perhaps conclude that the "

malignant" deity which Gosala's father* the Mauikhali, was carrying about, must have been just the same Siva of

whom ugly-looking and terrible pictures may, after all, have been known since very old times in India. And in

relation to this conjecture I might perhaps also lay stress

on the fact that djlvika seems to be sometimes used as

1 Deralaka or demla was a man who gained his livelihood by carrying about idols and showing them to the people (schol. ad Pan. v, 3, 99 ;

M.Bh.). Cf. Amarakoua, ii, 10, 11, devdjlvl tu devalah. He was also

called a ddivalaka (Har. 150) or bhdula (SKDr.).



AJIVIKA 673

a synonym of elca-dandin, a Saiva ascetic, and that the

maskarin of Panini, vi, 1, 154 (and Patafijali upon that

sutra) can scarcely have been anything but such a Saiva

ascetic carrying one staff.

I adduced in the Vienna Journal, vol. xxiii, p. 151 seq., and vol. xxv, p. 355 seq., several facts, that seemed to me

to prove Siva - worship to have been of considerable

importance in Eastern India already in pre-Buddhistic times. And perhaps we might see here another instance

pointing to the same suggestions that I made there. Of

course, nothing certain can be ascertained from these few.

lines concerning the original meaning and use of the word

ajivika, but I may venture to think, perhaps, that it

dates from the time before Buddha, and designated

originally an ascetic of the same kind as Gosala's father, a mendicant friar belonging to some Saiva sect.

There is another small observation too that might

perhaps lend some more weight to my hypothesis, though I confess most willingly it is a rather uncertain one. The

Vin. Pit. i, 8 tells us that Gotama, on his way from Gaya

immediately after his enlightenment, met with a certain

Upaka, a mendicant friar, whom the text calls an ajivika. If now it is almost certain that Buddha died at the age of 80 about 480 B.C., and was accordingly born about

560 B.C., this must have passed about 525 B.C., for we

know from the canonical texts that in his 36th year he became a Buddha. Now Dr. Hoernle has with much

probability calculated that Gosala died about B.C. 500?

I should rather think a little later?aud the Bhagavati states that he founded his order of mendicants at Savatthi

sixteen years before his death. If these calculations

could be proved, this Upaka, whom the Vinaya Pitaka

calls an djivalca, was certainly not a disciple of Gosala, but belonged to a sect previous to his. I readily confess

that not much importance can be ascribed to these

uncertain chronological calculations; but I think the



674 IMPRECATIONS IN INDIAN LAND GRANTS

statement of the Vinaya Pitaka may be viewed in con

nexion with the fact that the Buddhists never denote the

djlvikas as real followers of Gosala. Thus it might

perhaps obtain some little more probability. After all, I have only wished with these few remarks

to try to prove that djlvaka originally had nothing to

do with Gosala especially, but was a much older name

designating a sect to which he originally belonged and

afterwards transferred to his disciples.

Jarl Charpentier.

Imprecations in Indian Land Grants

On pp. 248 ff. of this Journal for 1912 Mr. Pargiter has

published a useful collection (increased afterwards by Professor Hultzsch, p. 476) of those passages from the

Malulbhdoxita and from the Puranas to which some of the

well-known imprecatory and benedictory verses quoted in

ancient Sanskrit grants of land may ultimately be traced.

Most of the earliest grants themselves either state, in

a general way, that these verses were composed or sung

by Vyasa or Veda-Vyasa, the reputed compiler of both the

Malulbhdo'ata and the Puranas, or declare more distinctly that they wTcre proclaimed by Vyasa in the Mahdbhdrata.

In connexion with this subject, it may perhaps be

mentioned that the fabulous Vyasa is regarded as the author

of a much quoted Smrti or law-book as well, and that it

is to this legal writer named Vyasa that the authorship of

the imprecations in the grants has been attributed in

Dr. Burnell's Elements of South Ioidiaoi Palaeography,

p. 114, where he says: "The last clause in most grants consists of imprecations on those who resume or violate

them; and these generally consist of the words froon the

Vydsasonrti given above, though often with considerable

variations." The reference is to a previous passage in

Dr. Burnell's Palaeography, containing the whole chapter



Ajivika

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