Gośāla

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GOŚĀLA

GOŚᾹLA , more fully Gośāla Maskariputra (sixth century bce according to tradition, but, following Western research, rather fifth, or even fourth century bce); one of the principal heterodox religious figures of early India. A contemporary of the Buddha and the Jina, Gośāla was the leader of the Ᾱjīvika community and is said to have regarded himself as the twenty-fourth tīrthaṅkara of the current avasarpiṇī ("descending") age. His name is given in various forms depending on the source of the reference: Makkhali Gośāla in Pali; Maskarin Gosāla ("the ascetic with the bamboo rod") in Buddhist Sanskrit; Gosāla Maṅkhaliputta in the Jain Prakrits; and Maṟkali in Tamil.

Much of the information concerning Gośāla and the Ᾱjīvikas derives from early Buddhist and Jain scriptures and the commentarial literature that developed around them. As a result, the picture of the Ᾱjīvikas suffers from the inevitable distortions of sectarian prejudice. Some stray allusions to the Ᾱjīvikas can also be found in Sanskrit literature. The Tamil epics, however, are comparatively well acquainted with the sect and the Ᾱjīvikas are mentioned in South Indian epigraphs dating from the fifth to the fourteenth century ce.

A fairly reliable account of Gośāla's life and his relationship with Māhavīra can be found in the fifteenth chapter of the fifth aṅga of the Jain canon. According to this account, Gośāla was born in the kingdom of Magadha (Bihar), probably the son of a maṅkha or professional mendicant. Impressed by the teachings and personality of Māhavīra, Gośāla insisted on being admitted as his disciple and for at least six years accompanied him on his peregrinations. At last, feeling himself to be spiritually more advanced than his master, he undertook the practice of austerities, acquired magic powers, and challenged Māhavīra. Surrounding himself with disciples, he is alleged to have established his headquarters in Śrāvasti (northwest of Magadha), forging close links with the potters' community there.

In the twenty-fourth year of his asceticism Gośāla was visited by six other ascetics, possibly disciples. It is surmised that at that meeting the teachings of Gośāla were codified to form the core of Ᾱjīvika scripture. It was on this occasion that he enumerated the six inevitable factors of life: gain and loss, joy and sorrow, and life and death, along with the two "paths," song and dance. It is now believed that the original corpus of Ᾱjīvika scripture was composed in an eastern Prakrit, perhaps akin to the Jain Prakrit Ardhamāgadhī. Quotations and adaptations of these scriptures appear to have been sporadically inserted in Buddhist and Jain accounts of the sect, but the Ᾱjīvika scriptures themselves failed to survive.

Ᾱjīvika doctrine apparently contained elaborate teachings on cosmology, reincarnation, and the elemental categories. It divided humanity into six groups, classified according to their psychic color (black, blue, red, green, golden/white, white/supremely white. Compare the lesyas in Jainism). However, the school is best remembered (and condemned in Buddhist and Jain sources) for its uncompromising determinism (niyati ). In a Jain text an Ᾱjīvika deity declares that there is in fact no real human effort, no deed, no strength, no courage, no action or prowess: all beings are instead "determined" (after Basham). This determinism thus denies free will, moral responsibility, or the maturation of karman. It was this tenet that elicited the strongest condemnation from the Buddha in his assessment of various "false views."

Bibliography

Although written many years ago, A. F. R. Hoernle's "Ᾱjīvikas," in volume 1 of the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, edited by James Hastings (Edinburgh, 1908), can still be profitably consulted. A convenient short summary of the Buddhist accounts concerning the Ᾱjīvikas can be found in George Peiris's "Ᾱjīvika" in volume 1 of the Dictionary of Pali Proper Names, edited by G. P. Malalasekera (1937; reprint, London, 1960). See also Jozef Deleu's Viyāhapannatti (Bhagavaī): The Fifth Anga of the Jaina Canon (Brugge, 1970), pp. 214–220. At present, the standard work on the subject is A. L. Basham's History and Doctrines of the Ᾱjīvikas: A Vanished Indian Religion (London, 1951). See also the review of this work by Walther Schubring: "Bücherbesprechungen: A. L. Basham; History and Doctrines of the Ᾱjīvikas ", Zeitschrift der Deutsche Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 104 (1954): 256–263. The dates of Gośāla cannot be disjoined from those of the Jina and of the Buddha. The latter, especially, has been reassessed; see Heinz Bechert (ed.), The Dating of the Historical Buddha /Die Datierung des historischen Buddha. Parts 1–3 (Symposien zur Buddhismusforschung, IV/1–3, Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen. Philologisch-Historische Klasse, Dritte Folge, Nos. 189, 194, 222), Göttingen, 1991, 1992 and 1997.