Buddhism in India

The Background to Buddhism 35

This shows a denial of the idea of karma and it ultimately resulted

in fatalism. Thus the Jains made two major divisions among the

samanas, the kriyavadisand akriyavadis: those oriented to action

with responsibility, those who denied both the efficacy of action and

subjective responsibility. The Ajivikas were clearly among the latter,

though the most extreme form is found in the reported teachings of

another leader, Purana Kassapa, who simply denied cause and thus

responsibility for actions:

To him who acts, O king, or causes another to act, to him who mutilates

or causes another to mutilate, to him who punishes or causes another

to punish, to him who causes grief or torment, to him who trembles

or causes others to tremble, to him who kills a living creature, who

takes what is not given, who breaks into houses, who commits

dacoity, or robbery, or highway robbery, or adultery, or who speaks

lies, to him thus acting there is no guilt. If with a discuss with an edge

as sharp as a razor he should make all the living creatures on the earth

one heap, one mass, of flesh, there would be no guilt hence resulting,

no increase of guilt would ensure. Were he to go along the south bank

of the Ganges striking and slaying, mutilating and having men mutilated,

oppressing and having men oppressed, there would be no guilt thence

resulting, no increase of guilt would ensue.

These are awesome words, more colorful than those describing

how no benefit accrues to the doing of good. Both to the Jains and

the Buddhists this doctrine of akriyawadwas extremely vicious,

leading to moral nihilism and evil behaviour.

Yet we have a record of this philosophy of skepticism and fatalism

only through its opponents, and there are inconsistencies in the

stories. The Ajivikas were usually described as extreme ascetics, yet

their most famous proponent, Makkhali Gosala, is said to have

used song and dance for ritual purposes and was himself said to

have been singing and dancing during his last delirium, replying to

an obscure question by one of his followers with, ‘Play the vina, old

fellow, play the vina’ (Chattopadhyaya 1981: 523). According to

the Marxist philosopher Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, Gosala’s

madness came about as a result of the fall of the tribal republics

and the massacre of their members. Chattopadhyaya considers

Gosala as the representative of a dying tribal equalitarianism, and

believes that the inevitability of defeat of the tribal republics by a

rising class society gave birth to pessimism. However, the period was

the Samannaphala Sutta, where the Magadha king Ajatasattu comes
to the Buddha to ask about the ‘fruits of the life of the samana’. In
the process Buddha describes the unsatisfactory answers given by six
other teachers of the time who had summarised their overall philoso-
phies. This is a beginning point for an understanding of the samana
trends.

atalists, Materialists and Dualists

Of the six teachers mentioned in the Samannaphala Sutta, two rep-
resent organised religious–philosophical groups that remained in
existence for some time, the Ajivikas and the Jains. The others are
not so easily identifiable.
The most pessimistic yet still powerful of all groups were the
Ajivikas, who were rigorously rational fatalists. For them, the
chains of causality which produced karma and led to rebirth were
inexorable; no intervention of ‘will’ could affect them, the chain
simply went on and on. Life (including what we see as good and
evil, pain and pleasure) simply goes on until it comes to an end.
TheSamannaphala Suttadescribes their leader Makkhali Gosala as
telling King Ajatasattu (in Rhys Davids’ translation):

There is, O king, no cause, either ultimate or remote, for the depravity

of beings; they become depraved without reason and without cause.

There is no cause, either proximate or remote, for the rectitude of

beings; they become pure without reason and without cause. The

attainment of any given condition, of any character, does not depend

either on one’s own acts, or on the acts of another, or on human

effort. There is no such thing as power or energy, or human strength,

or human vigor. All animals, all creatures, all beings, all souls are

without force and power and energy of their own. They are bent this

way and that by their fate, by the necessary conditions of the class to

which they belong, by their individual nature; and it is according to

their position in one or other of the six classes that they experience

ease or pain....The ease and pain [of countless lives], measured out,

as it were, with a measure, cannot be altered in the course of trans-

migration; there can be neither increase nor decrease thereof, neither

excess or deficiency. Just as when a ball of string is cast forth it will

spread out just as far, and no farther, then it can unwind, just so fools

and wise alike, wandering in transmigration exactly for the allotted

term, shall then, and only then, make an end of pain.

34 Buddhism in India