The Bhikṣuṇī Maṇimēkhalai

91 - The Philosophical Systems
that of the Ājīvakas has been as old as the Divyavādāna ascribable to
the age of Aśoka in the third century B.C.
The Ājīvakas are said to have flourished in a place called Samadaṇḍa
in the work Nīlakēśi as yet unpublished. The Maṇimēkhalai seems to
regard these two as one system that of the Śamaṇas or Jains. A later
Tamil work, Nīlakēśi and the Śaiva canonical work Śivajñānasiddhi
state distinctly that the two systems were branches of one. In other
places and other conditions the Ājīvakas were confounded 53 with
Buddhists, as in the Kannaḍa country about the time contemporary
with Śivajñānasiddhi. [56]
Then follow the three systems Sāṁkhya treated with some
elaboration, Vaiśēṣika, the substance of which is given perhaps a little
less fully than Sāṁkhya but equally clearly, and lastly the Bhūtavāda,
the atheistic system, treated as almost the same as the Lokāyata of
other works. After having heard all that the teachers of these
respective systems have had to say in Vañji, Maṇimēkhalai ridicules
53 For this confusion between the religion of the Jainas and the Ājīvakas
there is very good reason. In the matter of externals, the order instituted by
Markali Gōsāla, the founder of the Ājīvakas, a body of naked ascetics,
resembled the Digambara Jainas. Apart from other similarities in the
details of teaching between the two, there is one point where the similarity
is very close. People are said to be born in six colours in an ascending order,
namely, black, dark blue, yellow, red, golden and white, according to the
Ājīvakas. In the process of transmigration people have to pass on in regular
ascending order from one to the other till teaching the white birth, they
could attain to birthlessness. That is the teaching of the Ājīvakas according
to the Maṇimēkhalai; that is the teaching of the Ājīvakas according to
Śivajñāna Siddhiar; that is also the teaching of the Jains according to the
Jīvakacintāmaṇi (Muttiyilambakam 513, and Naccinārkiniyar’s comment
thereon). Such closeness of external appearance and internal conviction
would be justification enough if surrounding communities took the one
sect for the other.