Ājīvika

Ājīvika
An Ājīvika ascetic in a Gandhara sculpture of the Mahaparinirvana, circa 2nd–3rd century CE[1][2][3]
On the left: Mahākāśyapa meets an Ājīvika and learns of the parinirvana.[4]

Ajivika (Sanskrit: आजीविक, IAST: Ājīvika) is an ancient nāstika, or 'heterodox,' Indian school[5][6][7][8] of absolute fatalism or extreme determinism.[6][8][9] The Ājīvika school is known for its Niyati ("Fate") doctrine and for the premise that there is no free will, that everything that has happened, is happening and will happen is entirely preordained and a function of cosmic principles.[6][8][10]

Believed to have been founded in the 5th century BCE by Makkhali Gosāla, it was a Śramaṇa movement and a major rival to other contemporary orthodox and heterodox movements within the Indian philosophical milieu.[5][6][11] Ājīvikas were organized renunciates who formed discrete communities.[5][6][12] The precise identity of the Ājīvikas is not well known, and it is even unclear if they were a divergent sect of the Buddhists or the Jains.[13]

Original scriptures of the Ājīvika school of philosophy may once have existed, but these are currently unavailable and probably lost.[5][6] Their theories are extracted from mentions of Ājīvikas in the secondary sources of ancient Indian literature.[5][6][10] The oldest descriptions of the Ājīvika fatalists and their founder Gosāla can be found both in the Buddhist and Jaina scriptures of ancient India.[5][6][14] Scholars question whether Ājīvika philosophy has been fairly and completely summarized in these secondary sources, as they were written by groups (such as the Buddhists and Jains) competing with and adversarial to the philosophy and religious practices of the Ājīvikas.[6][15] It is likely that much of the information available about the Ājīvikas is inaccurate to some degree, and characterizations of them should be regarded carefully and critically.[6]

The predetermined fate of living beings was the major distinctive doctrine of their school, along with withholding judgement on how to achieve liberation (moksha) from the eternal cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, instead believing that fate would lead us there.[6][9] Ājīvikas further considered the karma doctrine as a fallacy.[16] They were mostly considered as atheists;[17] however, they believed that in every living being there is an ātman—a central premise of the Vedas.[18][19][20]

The metaphysics of Ājīvika included a theory of atoms, where everything was composed of atoms, qualities emerged from aggregates of atoms, but the aggregation and nature of these atoms were predetermined by cosmic laws and forces.[6] It was not until the later Avisakya Sūtra that the Jains, whose atomic theory was closest to that of the Ājīvikas, began claiming to have been the first to formulate an Indian theory of atomism.[21] A similar type of atomistic theory is also found in the Vaisheshika school. However, according to Basham, the Vaisheshika doctrine of atomism was significantly different, and more complete and thorough than that of both the Ājīvikas and the Jains.[22]

Ājīvika philosophy, otherwise referred to as Ājīvikism in Western scholarship,[6] reached the height of its popularity during the rule of the Mauryan emperor Bindusara, around the 4th century BCE. This school of thought declined but survived for nearly 2,000 years through the 13th and 14th centuries CE in the Southern Indian states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.[5][7][16][23] The Ājīvika philosophy, along with the Cārvāka philosophy, appealed most to the warrior, industrial, and mercantile classes of ancient Indian society.[24]

  1. ^ Balcerowicz, Piotr (2016). "A Religious Centre and the Art of the Ājīvikas". Early Asceticism in India: Ājīvikism and Jainism. Routledge Advances in Jaina Studies (1st ed.). London and New York: Routledge. pp. 278–281. ISBN 978-1-317-53853-0. Archived from the original on 24 February 2022. Retrieved 24 February 2022.
  2. ^ "British Museum catalogue". Archived from the original on 12 August 2019. Retrieved 12 August 2019.
  3. ^ "British Museum catalogue". Archived from the original on 12 August 2019. Retrieved 12 August 2019.
  4. ^ Marianne Yaldiz, Herbert Härtel, Along the Ancient Silk Routes: Central Asian Art from the West Berlin State Museums; an Exhibition Lent by the Museum Für Indische Kunst, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1982, p. 78
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Cite error: The named reference Johnson 2009 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Balcerowicz, Piotr (2016). "Determinism, Ājīvikas, and Jainism". Early Asceticism in India: Ājīvikism and Jainism. Routledge Advances in Jaina Studies (1st ed.). London and New York: Routledge. pp. 136–174. ISBN 978-1-317-53853-0. Archived from the original on 24 February 2022. Retrieved 24 February 2022. The Ājīvikas' doctrinal signature was indubitably the idea of determinism and fate, which traditionally incorporated four elements: the doctrine of destiny (niyati-vāda), the doctrine of predetermined concurrence of factors (saṅgati-vāda), the doctrine of intrinsic nature (svabhāva-vāda), occasionally also linked to materialists, and the doctrine of fate (daiva-vāda), or simply fatalism. The Ājīvikas' emphasis on fate and determinism was so profound that later sources would consistently refer to them as niyati-vādins, or 'the propounders of the doctrine of destiny'.
  7. ^ a b Natalia Isaeva (1993), Shankara and Indian Philosophy, State University of New York Press, ISBN 978-0791412817, pages 20-23
  8. ^ a b c James Lochtefeld, "Ajivika", The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Vol. 1: A–M, Rosen Publishing. ISBN 978-0823931798, page 22
  9. ^ a b Leaman, Oliver, ed. (1999). "Fatalism". Key Concepts in Eastern Philosophy. Routledge Key Guides (1st ed.). London and New York: Routledge. pp. 80–81. ISBN 978-0-415-17363-6. Archived from the original on 20 February 2022. Retrieved 20 February 2022. Fatalism. Some of the teachings of Indian philosophy are fatalistic. For example, the Ajivika school argued that fate (nyati) governs both the cycle of birth and rebirth, and also individual lives. Suffering is not attributed to past actions, but just takes place without any cause or rationale, as does relief from suffering. There is nothing we can do to achieve moksha, we just have to hope that all will go well with us. [...] But the Ajivikas were committed to asceticism, and they justified this in terms of its practice being just as determined by fate as anything else.
  10. ^ a b Basham 1951, Chapter 1.
  11. ^ Jeffrey D Long (2009), Jainism: An Introduction, Macmillan, ISBN 978-1845116255, page 199
  12. ^ Basham 1951, pp. 145–146.
  13. ^ Fogelin, Lars (2015). An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism. Oxford University Press. p. 26. ISBN 978-0-19-994822-2. Archived from the original on 3 July 2023. Retrieved 16 November 2019.
  14. ^ Basham 1951, pp. 224–238:The fundamental principle of Ājīvika philosophy was Fate, usually called Niyati. Buddhist and Jaina sources agree that Gosāla was a rigid determinist, who exalted Niyati to the status of the motive factor of the universe and the sole agent of all phenomenal change. This is quite clear in our locus classicus, the Samaññaphala Sutta. Sin and suffering, attributed by other sects to the laws of karma, the result of evil committed in the previous lives or in the present one, were declared by Gosāla to be without cause or basis, other, presumably, than the force of destiny. Similarly, the escape from evil, the working off of accumulated evil karma, was likewise without cause or basis.
  15. ^ Cite error: The named reference dundas was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  16. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference philtar was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  17. ^ Johannes Quack (2014), The Oxford Handbook of Atheism (Editors: Stephen Bullivant, Michael Ruse), Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0199644650, page 654
  18. ^ Analayo (2004), Satipaṭṭhāna: The Direct Path to Realization, ISBN 978-1899579549, pp. 207-208
  19. ^ Basham 1951, pp. 240–261.
  20. ^ Basham 1951, pp. 270–273.
  21. ^ Basham 1951, pp. 267.
  22. ^ Basham 1951, pp. 268.
  23. ^ Arthur Basham, Kenneth Zysk (1991), The Origins and Development of Classical Hinduism, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0195073492, Chapter 4
  24. ^ DM Riepe (1996), Naturalistic Tradition in Indian Thought, Motilal Banarsidass, ISBN 978-8120812932, pages 39-40
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