Gosala Maskariputra, a contemporary of the Buddha, is said to have established this ancient intellectual school.
The Ajivikas were fatalists who thought that everything is predestined inexorably by fate (niyati).
- Because everything is predestined under this concept, religious practice has no effect on one's future lives, and individuals are just doing what they are already predetermined to do.
- The Ajivikas likened rebirth (samsara) to a ball of thread that would unroll until it reached its destination and then stop.
- The Ajivikas avoided wearing clothes and lived a rigorous austere lifestyle, thinking that this was their destiny.
The school had a major presence in southern India long into the common period, but by the fourteenth century, it had all but vanished.
See Arthur Llewellyn Basham's 1981 book, History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas, a Vanished Indian Religion, for further information.
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