Predeterminism is the philosophy that all events of history, past, present and future, have been already decided or are already known (by God , fate, or some other force), including human actions.
151-399: Ajivika ( Sanskrit : आजीविक , IAST : Ājīvika ) is one of the nāstika or "heterodox" schools of Indian philosophy . Believed to have been founded in the 5th century BCE by Makkhali Gosāla , it was a Śramaṇa movement and a major rival of Vedic religion , early Buddhism , and Jainism . Ājīvikas were organized renunciates who formed discrete communities. The precise identity of
302-463: A belief in the existence of a conscious being who must determine all actions and events in advance and who, possessing such seeming omnipotence , almost certainly operates outside of the laws of nature. This conscious entity is probably, then, a being who is omnipotent as well as presumably supernatural and omniscient . The definitional confusion here is that there is already a name for this very concept: predestination . Predestination asserts that
453-434: A dead language in the most common usage of the term. Pollock's notion of the "death of Sanskrit" remains in this unclear realm between academia and public opinion when he says that "most observers would agree that, in some crucial way, Sanskrit is dead." Predeterminism Predeterminism is closely related to determinism . The concept of predeterminism is often argued by invoking causal determinism , implying that there
604-684: A debate, disagreement, and then "coming to blows" between factions led by Mahavira and by Gosala. Sanskrit language Sanskrit ( / ˈ s æ n s k r ɪ t / ; attributively 𑀲𑀁𑀲𑁆𑀓𑀾𑀢𑀁 , संस्कृत- , saṃskṛta- ; nominally संस्कृतम् , saṃskṛtam , IPA: [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm] ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages . It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from
755-690: A doctrine [of Ajivikas] which genuinely advocated the lack of efficacy of individual effort could have formed the basis of a renunciatory path to spiritual liberation", and that "the suspicion must be that the Jains and Buddhists deliberately distorted Ajivika doctrine for their own polemical purposes". In contrast, other scholars suggest that at least the common elements found about Ājīvikas in Jain and Buddhist literature may be considered, because Jainism and Buddhism were two different, competing and conflicting philosophies in ancient India. The problems of time and change
906-433: A focus on Indian philosophies and Sanskrit. Though written in a number of different scripts, the dominant language of Hindu texts has been Sanskrit. It or a hybrid form of Sanskrit became the preferred language of Mahayana Buddhism scholarship; for example, one of the early and influential Buddhist philosophers, Nagarjuna (~200 CE), used Classical Sanskrit as the language for his texts. According to Renou, Sanskrit had
1057-409: A fully elaborate philosophy, produced by its scholars and logicians, but those texts are lost. Their literature evolved over the centuries, like other traditions of Indian philosophy, through the medieval era. The Pali and Prakrit texts of Buddhism and Jainism suggest that Ajivika theories were codified, some of which were quoted in commentaries produced by Buddhist and Jaina scholars. The main texts of
1208-591: A language competed with numerous, less exact vernacular Indian languages called Prakritic languages ( prākṛta - ). The term prakrta literally means "original, natural, normal, artless", states Franklin Southworth . The relationship between Prakrit and Sanskrit is found in Indian texts dated to the 1st millennium CE. Patañjali acknowledged that Prakrit is the first language, one instinctively adopted by every child with all its imperfections and later leads to
1359-658: A limited role in the Theravada tradition (formerly known as the Hinayana) but the Prakrit works that have survived are of doubtful authenticity. Some of the canonical fragments of the early Buddhist traditions, discovered in the 20th century, suggest the early Buddhist traditions used an imperfect and reasonably good Sanskrit, sometimes with a Pali syntax, states Renou. The Mahāsāṃghika and Mahavastu, in their late Hinayana forms, used hybrid Sanskrit for their literature. Sanskrit
1510-475: A mere function of atoms operating under cosmic rules. Riepe states that the details of the Ajivikas theory of atomism provided the foundations of later modified atomism theories found in Jain, Buddhist, and Vedic traditions. Another doctrine of Ajivikas philosophy, according to Buddhist texts, was their antinomian ethics, that is there exist "no objective moral laws". Buddhaghosa summarizes this view as, "There
1661-429: A metaphysical concept. While determinism usually refers to a naturalistically explainable causality of events, predeterminism seems by definition to suggest a person or a "someone" who is controlling or planning the causality of events before they occur and who then perhaps resides beyond the natural, causal universe. This creates a definitional conflict because predeterminism, by this understanding, logically leads to
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#17327647986711812-454: A natural part of the earliest Vedic language, and that these developed in the centuries after the composition had been completed, and as a gradual unconscious process during the oral transmission by generations of reciters. The primary source for this argument is internal evidence of the text which betrays an instability of the phenomenon of retroflexion, with the same phrases having sandhi-induced retroflexion in some parts but not other. This
1963-479: A negative evidence to Pollock's hypothesis, but it is not positive evidence. A closer look at Sanskrit in the Indian history after the 12th century suggests that Sanskrit survived despite the odds. According to Hanneder, On a more public level the statement that Sanskrit is a dead language is misleading, for Sanskrit is quite obviously not as dead as other dead languages and the fact that it is spoken, written and read will probably convince most people that it cannot be
2114-546: A pan-Indo-Aryan accessibility to information and knowledge in the ancient and medieval times, in contrast to the Prakrit languages which were understood just regionally. It created a cultural bond across the subcontinent. As local languages and dialects evolved and diversified, Sanskrit served as the common language. It connected scholars from distant parts of South Asia such as Tamil Nadu and Kashmir, states Deshpande, as well as those from different fields of studies, though there must have been differences in its pronunciation given
2265-578: A refined and standardized grammatical form that emerged in the mid-1st millennium BCE and was codified in the most comprehensive of ancient grammars, the Aṣṭādhyāyī ('Eight chapters') of Pāṇini . The greatest dramatist in Sanskrit, Kālidāsa , wrote in classical Sanskrit, and the foundations of modern arithmetic were first described in classical Sanskrit. The two major Sanskrit epics, the Mahābhārata and
2416-538: A restrained language from which archaisms and unnecessary formal alternatives were excluded". The Classical form of the language simplified the sandhi rules but retained various aspects of the Vedic language, while adding rigor and flexibilities, so that it had sufficient means to express thoughts as well as being "capable of responding to the future increasing demands of an infinitely diversified literature", according to Renou. Pāṇini included numerous "optional rules" beyond
2567-439: A similar phonetic structure to Tamil. Hock et al. quoting George Hart state that there was influence of Old Tamil on Sanskrit. Hart compared Old Tamil and Classical Sanskrit to arrive at a conclusion that there was a common language from which these features both derived – "that both Tamil and Sanskrit derived their shared conventions, metres, and techniques from a common source, for it is clear that neither borrowed directly from
2718-439: A simple ascetic life, without clothes and material possessions. Tamil literature on Ajivikas suggests they practiced Ahimsa (non-violence) and a vegetarian lifestyle. Arthur Basham notes that Buddhist and Jaina texts variously accuse Ajivikas of immorality, unchastity, and worldliness, but they also acknowledge the confusion among Buddhists and Jainas when they observed the simple, ascetic lifestyle of Ajivikas. The Ajivikas had
2869-565: A supremely powerful being has, in advance, fixed all events and outcomes in the universe; it is a famous doctrine of the Calvinists in Christian theology . Likewise, the doctrine of fatalism already explicitly attributes all events and outcomes to the will of a (vaguer) higher power such as fate or destiny. Furthermore, in philosophic debates about the compatibility of free will and determinism , some argue that predeterminism back to
3020-516: Is akin to that of Latin and Ancient Greek in Europe. Sanskrit has significantly influenced most modern languages of the Indian subcontinent , particularly the languages of the northern, western, central and eastern Indian subcontinent. Sanskrit declined starting about and after the 13th century. This coincides with the beginning of Islamic invasions of South Asia to create, and thereafter expand
3171-535: Is already predetermined to be that way. No human effort could change this niyati and the karma ethical theory was a fallacy. James Lochtefeld summarizes this aspect of Ajivika belief as, "life and the universe is like a ball of pre-wrapped up string, which unrolls until it was done and then goes no further". Riepe states that the Ajivika belief in predeterminism does not mean that they were pessimistic. Rather, just like Calvinists belief in predeterminism in Europe,
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#17327647986713322-645: Is an ātman —a central premise of Vedic religion and Jainism. Ājīvika philosophy, otherwise referred to as Ājīvikism in Western scholarship , 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 . The Ājīvika philosophy, along with
3473-442: Is an unbroken chain of prior occurrences stretching back to infinity. In the case of predeterminism, this chain of events has been pre-established, and human actions cannot interfere with the outcomes of this pre-established chain. Predeterminism can be used to mean such pre-established causal determinism, in which case it is categorised as a specific type of determinism. It can also be used interchangeably with causal determinism—in
3624-477: Is cited in ancient texts of Buddhism and Jainism to Makkhali Gosala , a contemporary of the Buddha and Mahavira . In Sandaka Sutta the Ājīvikas are said to recognize three emancipators: Nanda Vaccha, Kisa Saṅkicca, and Makkhali Gosāla. Exact origins of Ājīvika is unknown, but generally accepted to be the 5th century BCE. Primary sources and literature of the Ājīvikas are lost, or yet to be found. Everything that
3775-452: Is found in the writing of Bharata Muni , the author of the ancient Natya Shastra text. The early Jain scholar Namisādhu acknowledged the difference, but disagreed that the Prakrit language was a corruption of Sanskrit. Namisādhu stated that the Prakrit language was the pūrvam ('came before, origin') and that it came naturally to children, while Sanskrit was a refinement of Prakrit through "purification by grammar". Sanskrit belongs to
3926-649: Is generally considered as the founder of the Ājīvika movement. Some sources state that Gosala was only a leader of a large Ājīvika congregation of ascetics, but not the founder of the movement himself. The Swedish Indologist Jarl Charpentier and others suggest the Ājīvika tradition existed in India well before the birth of Makkhali Gosala, citing a variety of ancient Indian texts. Gosala was believed to be born in Tiruppatur of Tiruchirappalli district in Tamil Nadu and
4077-618: Is known about Ājīvika history and its philosophy is from secondary sources, such as the ancient and medieval texts of India. Inconsistent fragments of Ājīvika history are found mostly in Jain texts such as the Bhagvati Sutra and Buddhist texts such as the Samaññaphala Sutta and Sandaka Sutta , and Buddhaghosa 's commentary on Sammannaphala Sutta, with a few mentions in Hindu texts such as Vayu Purana. The Ājīvikas reached
4228-425: Is known for its Niyati (" Fate ") doctrine of absolute fatalism or determinism , 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. 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
4379-541: Is neither cause nor basis for the sins of living beings and they become sinful without cause or basis. There is neither cause nor basis for the purity of living beings and they become pure without cause or basis. All beings, all that have breath, all that are born, all that have life, are without power, or strength, or virtue, but are the result of destiny, chance and nature, and they experience joy and sorrow in six classes". Despite this ascribed premise of antinomian ethics, both Jain and Buddhist records note that Ājīvikas lived
4530-428: Is neither created nor destroyed, that which retains its identity by never growing nor expanding nor splitting nor changing, yet that which moves, assembles and combines to form the perceived. The Tamil text of Ajivikas asserts this "coming together of atoms can take diversity of forms, such as the dense form of a diamond, or a loose form of a hollow bamboo". Everything one perceives, states the atomism theory of Ajivikas,
4681-496: Is one who misquoted Hobart's title, but who had the same misgivings about determinism. In 1957 she wrote an article in The Philosophical Review entitled "Free Will As Involving Determinism." Nevertheless, she criticized arguments that free will requires indeterminism, and in particular the idea that one could not be held responsible for "chance" actions chosen for no particular reason. Her article begins with
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4832-532: Is rare in the later version of the language. The Homerian Greek, like Ṛg-vedic Sanskrit, deploys simile extensively, but they are structurally very different. The early Vedic form of the Sanskrit language was far less homogenous compared to the Classical Sanskrit as defined by grammarians by about the mid-1st millennium BCE. According to Richard Gombrich—an Indologist and a scholar of Sanskrit, Pāli and Buddhist Studies—the archaic Vedic Sanskrit found in
4983-479: Is taken along with evidence of controversy, for example, in passages of the Aitareya-Āraṇyaka (700 BCE), which features a discussion on whether retroflexion is valid in particular cases. The Ṛg-veda is a collection of books, created by multiple authors. These authors represented different generations, and the mandalas 2 to 7 are the oldest while the mandalas 1 and 10 are relatively the youngest. Yet,
5134-418: Is that the word predetermine necessarily implies a conscious being "doing" the determining ahead of time. With regards to predetermined heredity, a conscious being (perhaps a genetic scientist) is presumed to be the one speculating on what the fetus's personal characteristics will turn out to be, for example, based on looking at the genomes of the fetus and its ancestors. If there were not this conscious entity,
5285-589: Is the predominant language of one of the largest collection of historic manuscripts. The earliest known inscriptions in Sanskrit are from the 1st century BCE, such as the Ayodhya Inscription of Dhana and Ghosundi-Hathibada (Chittorgarh) . Though developed and nurtured by scholars of orthodox schools of Hinduism, Sanskrit has been the language for some of the key literary works and theology of heterodox schools of Indian philosophies such as Buddhism and Jainism. The structure and capabilities of
5436-413: Is unknown to what degree the available non-Ājīvika sources reflect the actual beliefs and practices of the Ājīvikas. Most of what is known about them was recorded in the literature of rival groups, modern scholars question the reliability of the secondary sources, and whether intentional distortions for dehumanization and criticism were introduced into the records. More recent work by scholars suggests that
5587-540: The Bhagavata Purana , the Panchatantra and many other texts are all in the Sanskrit language. The Classical Sanskrit with its exacting grammar was thus the language of the Indian scholars and the educated classes, while others communicated with approximate or ungrammatical variants of it as well as other natural Indian languages. Sanskrit, as the learned language of Ancient India, thus existed alongside
5738-634: The Buddhist and Jaina scriptures of ancient India. 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. 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. The Ājīvika school
5889-887: The Cārvāka philosophy, appealed most to the warrior, industrial, and mercantile classes of ancient Indian society . Ājīvika means "Follower of the Way of Life". Ajivika ( Prakrit : 𑀆𑀚𑀻𑀯𑀺𑀓 , ājīvika ; Sanskrit : आजीविक , IAST: ājīvika ) or adivika ( Prakrit : 𑀆𑀤𑀻𑀯𑀺𑀓 , ādīvika ) are both derived from Sanskrit आजीव ( ājīva ) which literally means "livelihood, lifelong, mode of life". The term Ajivika means "those following special rules with regard to Iivelihood", sometimes connoting "religious mendicants" in ancient Sanskrit and Pali texts. The name Ajivika for an entire philosophy resonates with its core belief in "no free will" and complete niyati , literally "inner order of things, self-command, predeterminism ", leading to
6040-580: The Dalai Lama , the Sanskrit language is a parent language that is at the foundation of many modern languages of India and the one that promoted Indian thought to other distant countries. In Tibetan Buddhism, states the Dalai Lama, Sanskrit language has been a revered one and called legjar lhai-ka or "elegant language of the gods". It has been the means of transmitting the "profound wisdom of Buddhist philosophy" to Tibet. The Sanskrit language created
6191-613: The Indo-European family of languages . It is one of the three earliest ancient documented languages that arose from a common root language now referred to as Proto-Indo-European : Other Indo-European languages distantly related to Sanskrit include archaic and Classical Latin ( c. 600 BCE–100 CE, Italic languages ), Gothic (archaic Germanic language , c. 350 CE ), Old Norse ( c. 200 CE and after), Old Avestan ( c. late 2nd millennium BCE ) and Younger Avestan ( c. 900 BCE). The closest ancient relatives of Vedic Sanskrit in
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6342-753: The Rigveda had already evolved in the Vedic period, as evidenced in the later Vedic literature. Gombrich posits that the language in the early Upanishads of Hinduism and the late Vedic literature approaches Classical Sanskrit, while the archaic Vedic Sanskrit had by the Buddha 's time become unintelligible to all except ancient Indian sages. The formalization of the Saṃskṛta language is credited to Pāṇini , along with Patañjali's Mahābhāṣya and Katyayana's commentary that preceded Patañjali's work. Panini composed Aṣṭādhyāyī ('Eight-Chapter Grammar'), which became
6493-531: The Rāmāyaṇa , however, were composed in a range of oral storytelling registers called Epic Sanskrit which was used in northern India between 400 BCE and 300 CE, and roughly contemporary with classical Sanskrit. In the following centuries, Sanskrit became tradition-bound, stopped being learned as a first language, and ultimately stopped developing as a living language. The hymns of the Rigveda are notably similar to
6644-533: The Vaishnavite Ekadandin ascetics. However, according to historian Ajay Mitra Shastri , Varahamihira indeed refers to the Ajivikas, who may have existed as an influential sect in the 6th century. A.L. Basham notes that there are several such instances of Ajivikas being confused with other major sects: for example, the commentator of Achara-sara believes them to be Buddhist, and in Neelakesi ,
6795-587: The eternal cycle of birth, death, and rebirth , instead believing that fate would lead us there. Ājīvikas further considered the karma doctrine as a fallacy. Ājīvika metaphysics included a theory of atoms , which was later adapted in the Vaiśeṣika school, 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. Ājīvikas were mostly considered as atheists . They believed that in every living being there
6946-406: The sandhi rules, both internal and external. Quite many words found in the early Vedic Sanskrit language are never found in late Vedic Sanskrit or Classical Sanskrit literature, while some words have different and new meanings in Classical Sanskrit when contextually compared to the early Vedic Sanskrit literature. Arthur Macdonell was among the early colonial era scholars who summarized some of
7097-500: The verbal adjective sáṃskṛta- is a compound word consisting of sáṃ ('together, good, well, perfected') and kṛta - ('made, formed, work'). It connotes a work that has been "well prepared, pure and perfect, polished, sacred". According to Biderman, the perfection contextually being referred to in the etymological origins of the word is its tonal—rather than semantic—qualities. Sound and oral transmission were highly valued qualities in ancient India, and its sages refined
7248-414: The 13th century, a premier center of Sanskrit literary creativity, Sanskrit literature there disappeared, perhaps in the "fires that periodically engulfed the capital of Kashmir" or the "Mongol invasion of 1320" states Pollock. The Sanskrit literature which was once widely disseminated out of the northwest regions of the subcontinent, stopped after the 12th century. As Hindu kingdoms fell in the eastern and
7399-604: The 4th century BCE, the era of the Maurya Empire . Riepe refers to Ājīvikas as a distinct heterodox school of Indian tradition. Raju states that "Ājīvikas and Cārvākas can be called Hindus " and adds that "the word Hinduism has no definite meaning". Epigraphical evidence suggests that emperor Ashoka , in the 3rd century BCE, considered Ājīvikas to be more closely related to the schools of Vedic's than to Buddhists, Jainas or other Indian schools of thought. Makkhali Gosala ( Pali ; Sanskrit Gośala Maskariputra , c. 484 BCE)
7550-657: The 5th century CE. The Caves were subsequently occupied by Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims. It is unlikely that the Muslims defaced the inscriptions, as the Brahmi script was illegible to them. E. Hultzsch theorized that the defacement took place when the Maukhari (c. 6th century) ruler Ananta-varman installed Hindu images at the Caves. However, Basham dismisses this theory, noting that there is little evidence to support this view and
7701-532: The 7th century where he established a major center of learning and language translation under the patronage of Emperor Taizong. By the early 1st millennium CE, Sanskrit had spread Buddhist and Hindu ideas to Southeast Asia, parts of the East Asia and the Central Asia. It was accepted as a language of high culture and the preferred language by some of the local ruling elites in these regions. According to
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#17327647986717852-401: The Ajivika leader clarifies that his followers should not be mistaken for Digambaras . According to Basham, this suggests that the surviving Ajivikas adopted some of the beliefs and customs of the more popular faiths and possibly merged with them. The Jain commentator Mallisena, who wrote Syadvada-manjari (1292 CE), suggests that the Ajivikas existed during his time; he may have been aware of
8003-560: The Ajivikas in Pundravardhana , enraged at a picture that depicted Gautama Buddha in a negative light. Around 18,000 followers of the Ajivika sect were supposedly executed as a result of this order. The entire story may be apocryphal and fictitious as Ashoka himself contributed for the growth of Ajivikas sect by constructing four caves for Ajivakas at Barabar . An earlier Jaina text, the Bhagavati Sutra , similarly mentions
8154-564: The Ajivikas included the ten Purvas (eight Mahanimittas , two Maggas ) and the Onpatu Katir . The Mahanimittas of Ajivikas claims Bhagavati Sutra was extracted from the teachings Gosala received from Mahavira when he was a disciple. The belief of Ajivikas in absolute determinism and influence of cosmic forces led them to develop extensive sections in their Mahanimittas texts on mapping the sun, moon, planets, and stars and their role in astrology and fortune telling. Isaeva suggests that
8305-508: The Ajivikas of southern India. At least 17 inscriptions from southern India suggest that a tax was imposed on Ajivikas or Acuvas (believed to be a Tamil form of Ajivikas) there. These inscriptions range from the time of the Pallava king Simhavarman II (c. 446 CE) to the 14th century. The last of these inscriptions are dated to 1346 CE ( Shaka 1268), found at three different places around Kolar . E. Hultzsch and Rudolf Hoernlé theorized that
8456-400: The Ajivikas were engraved during the 12th year and the 19th year of his reign (about 258 BCE and 251 BCE respectively, based on a coronation date of 269 BCE). In several instances, the word "Ājīvikas" (𑀆𑀤𑀻𑀯𑀺𑀓𑁂𑀳𑀺, Ādīvikehi ) was later attacked by the chisel, probably by religious rivals, at a time when the Brahmi script was still understood (probably before the 5th century CE). However,
8607-811: The Ajivikas were optimists. The Ajivikas simply did not believe in the moral force of action, or in merits or demerits, or in after-life to be affected because of what one does or does not do. Actions had immediate effects in one's current life but without any moral traces, and both the action and the effect was predetermined, according to the Ajivikas. Makkhali Gosala seems to have combined the ideas of older schools of thought into an eclectic doctrine. He appears to have believed in niyati (destiny), svabhava (nature), sangati (change), and possibly parinama , which may have prompted other philosophical schools to label him variously as ahetuvadin , vainayikavadin , ajnanavadin , and issarakaranavadin . According to him, all beings undergo development ( parinama ). This culminates in
8758-425: The Classical Sanskrit language launched ancient Indian speculations about "the nature and function of language", what is the relationship between words and their meanings in the context of a community of speakers, whether this relationship is objective or subjective, discovered or is created, how individuals learn and relate to the world around them through language, and about the limits of language? They speculated on
8909-532: The Dravidian languages borrowed from Sanskrit vocabulary, but they have also affected Sanskrit on deeper levels of structure, "for instance in the domain of phonology where Indo-Aryan retroflexes have been attributed to Dravidian influence". Similarly, Ferenc Ruzca states that all the major shifts in Indo-Aryan phonetics over two millennia can be attributed to the constant influence of a Dravidian language with
9060-521: The Dravidian words and forms, without modifying the word order; but the same thing is not possible in rendering a Persian or English sentence into a non-Indo-Aryan language. Shulman mentions that "Dravidian nonfinite verbal forms (called vinaiyeccam in Tamil) shaped the usage of the Sanskrit nonfinite verbs (originally derived from inflected forms of action nouns in Vedic). This particularly salient case of
9211-476: The Indo-Aryan language underwent rapid linguistic change and morphed into the Vedic Sanskrit language. The pre-Classical form of Sanskrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit . The earliest attested Sanskrit text is the Rigveda , a Hindu scripture from the mid- to late-second millennium BCE. No written records from such an early period survive, if any ever existed, but scholars are generally confident that
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#17327647986719362-519: The Indo-European languages are the Nuristani languages found in the remote Hindu Kush region of northeastern Afghanistan and northwestern Himalayas, as well as the extinct Avestan and Old Persian – both are Iranian languages . Sanskrit belongs to the satem group of the Indo-European languages. Colonial era scholars familiar with Latin and Greek were struck by the resemblance of
9513-523: The Maurya and the Gupta periods may have been responsible for the persecution of the Ajivikas. The Brhaj-jataka of Varahamihira (6th century) mentions the Ajivikas (among other major ascetic groups) in an astrological context, stating that a person born under a certain planetary influence becomes an Ajivika ascetic. According to the 9th-10th century commentator Utpala , "Ajivika" in this context refers to
9664-532: The Muslim rule in the form of Sultanates, and later the Mughal Empire . Sheldon Pollock characterises the decline of Sanskrit as a long-term "cultural, social, and political change". He dismisses the idea that Sanskrit declined due to "struggle with barbarous invaders", and emphasises factors such as the increasing attractiveness of vernacular language for literary expression. With the fall of Kashmir around
9815-496: The Muslim rulers. Hindu rulers such as Shivaji of the Maratha Empire , reversed the process, by re-adopting Sanskrit and re-asserting their socio-linguistic identity. After Islamic rule disintegrated in South Asia and the colonial rule era began, Sanskrit re-emerged but in the form of a "ghostly existence" in regions such as Bengal. This decline was the result of "political institutions and civic ethos" that did not support
9966-499: The Saṃskṛta language, both in its vocabulary and grammar, to the classical languages of Europe. In The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World , Mallory and Adams illustrate the resemblance with the following examples of cognate forms (with the addition of Old English for further comparison): The correspondences suggest some common root, and historical links between some of
10117-638: The South India, such as the great Vijayanagara Empire , so did Sanskrit. There were exceptions and short periods of imperial support for Sanskrit, mostly concentrated during the reign of the tolerant Mughal emperor Akbar . Muslim rulers patronized the Middle Eastern language and scripts found in Persia and Arabia, and the Indians linguistically adapted to this Persianization to gain employment with
10268-447: The Vedic Sanskrit in these books of the Ṛg-veda "hardly presents any dialectical diversity", states Louis Renou – an Indologist known for his scholarship of the Sanskrit literature and the Ṛg-veda in particular. According to Renou, this implies that the Vedic Sanskrit language had a "set linguistic pattern" by the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE. Beyond the Ṛg-veda, the ancient literature in Vedic Sanskrit that has survived into
10419-451: The Vedic Sanskrit's bahulam framework, to respect liberty and creativity so that individual writers separated by geography or time would have the choice to express facts and their views in their own way, where tradition followed competitive forms of the Sanskrit language. The phonetic differences between Vedic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit, as discerned from the current state of the surviving literature, are negligible when compared to
10570-407: The alphabet, the structure of words, and its exacting grammar into a "collection of sounds, a kind of sublime musical mold" as an integral language they called Saṃskṛta . From the late Vedic period onwards, state Annette Wilke and Oliver Moebus, resonating sound and its musical foundations attracted an "exceptionally large amount of linguistic, philosophical and religious literature" in India. Sound
10721-440: The capacity to understand the old Prakrit languages such as Ardhamagadhi . A section of European scholars state that Sanskrit was never a spoken language. However, evidences shows that Sanskrit was a spoken language, essential for oral tradition that preserved the vast number of Sanskrit manuscripts from ancient India. The textual evidence in the works of Yaksa, Panini, and Patanajali affirms that Classical Sanskrit in their era
10872-527: The close relationship between the Indo-Iranian tongues and the Baltic and Slavic languages , vocabulary exchange with the non-Indo-European Uralic languages , and the nature of the attested Indo-European words for flora and fauna. The pre-history of Indo-Aryan languages which preceded Vedic Sanskrit is unclear and various hypotheses place it over a fairly wide limit. According to Thomas Burrow, based on
11023-515: The common era, inscriptions suggests that the Ājīvikas had a significant presence in the South Indian state of Karnataka , prominently in Kolar district and some places of Tamil Nadu . The Ājīvika philosophy spread rapidly in ancient South Asia, with a Sangha Geham (community center) for Ājīvikas on the island now known as Sri Lanka and also extending into the western state of Gujarat by
11174-589: The conditions of the Maurya and pre-Maurya times. In northern India, Ajivikas may have become insignificant by the Shunga period (1st century BCE), although they may have survived until the 15th century, as suggested by stray references to them in various texts. References in the Vayu Purana suggest that during the Gupta period (fourth-6th century CE) the Ajivika practices had changed substantially, and their sect
11325-614: The context of a speech or language, is found in verses 5.28.17–19 of the Ramayana . Outside the learned sphere of written Classical Sanskrit, vernacular colloquial dialects ( Prakrits ) continued to evolve. Sanskrit co-existed with numerous other Prakrit languages of ancient India. The Prakrit languages of India also have ancient roots and some Sanskrit scholars have called these Apabhramsa , literally 'spoiled'. The Vedic literature includes words whose phonetic equivalent are not found in other Indo-European languages but which are found in
11476-496: The context of its capacity to determine future events. Despite this, predeterminism is often considered as independent of causal determinism. The term predeterminism is also frequently used in the context of biology and heredity, in which case it represents a form of biological determinism . Predeterminism is difficult to discuss because its simple definition can logically lead to a variety of similar, complex (and, perhaps, better defined) concepts in metaphysics , theology , and
11627-433: The couple continued to live in a corner of the cowshed, and it was there that Bhaddā gave birth to her child." Gosala is described in ancient texts as a contemporary of Mahavira , the 24th Tirthankara of Jainism , and of Gautama Buddha . The Jain Bhagavati Sutra refers to him as Gosala Mankhaliputta ("son of Mankhali"). The text depicts Gosala as having been a disciple of Mahavira's for a period of six years, after which
11778-475: The course of time ( samsarasuddhi ) in final salvation to which all beings are destined under the impact of the factors of niyati (destiny), bhava (nature), and sangati (change). As such, destiny does not appear as the only player, but rather chance or indeterminism plays an equal part in his doctrine. He thus subscribed to niyativada (fatalism) only in the sense that he thought that some future events like salvation for all were strictly determined. Ajivika
11929-653: The crystallization of Classical Sanskrit. As in this period the Indo-Aryan tribes had not yet made contact with the inhabitants of the South of the subcontinent, this suggests a significant presence of Dravidian speakers in North India (the central Gangetic plain and the classical Madhyadeśa) who were instrumental in this substratal influence on Sanskrit. Extant manuscripts in Sanskrit number over 30 million, one hundred times those in Greek and Latin combined, constituting
12080-494: The definition of predeterminism itself appears awkward, unclear, and perhaps even worthless in terms of practical or philosophic discussion. R. E. Hobart is the pseudonym of Dickinson S. Miller , a student of William James who was later one of James' closest personal friends and for some years a colleague in the Harvard philosophy department. Hobart (Miller) criticized the core idea of James' The Will to Believe , namely that it
12231-571: The desires of the man who does it is not necessarily an action for which there is supposed to be a sufficient condition. In saying that it is determined by his desires we may mean merely that he is doing something that he wants to do, or that he is doing it for the sake of something else that he wants. There is nothing in this to suggest determinism in Russell 's sense." Foot cited Bertrand Russell's view of causal determinism: "The law of universal causation . . . may be enunciated as follows:...given
12382-467: The detailed and sophisticated treatise then transmitted it through his students. Modern scholarship generally accepts that he knew of a form of writing, based on references to words such as Lipi ('script') and lipikara ('scribe') in section 3.2 of the Aṣṭādhyāyī . The Classical Sanskrit language formalized by Pāṇini, states Renou, is "not an impoverished language", rather it is "a controlled and
12533-471: The differences between the Vedic and Classical Sanskrit. Louis Renou published in 1956, in French, a more extensive discussion of the similarities, the differences and the evolution of the Vedic Sanskrit within the Vedic period and then to the Classical Sanskrit along with his views on the history. This work has been translated by Jagbans Balbir. The earliest known use of the word Saṃskṛta (Sanskrit), in
12684-460: The distant major ancient languages of the world. The Indo-Aryan migrations theory explains the common features shared by Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages by proposing that the original speakers of what became Sanskrit arrived in South Asia from a region of common origin, somewhere north-west of the Indus region , during the early 2nd millennium BCE. Evidence for such a theory includes
12835-548: The first language of the respective speakers. The Sanskrit language brought Indo-Aryan speaking people together, particularly its elite scholars. Some of these scholars of Indian history regionally produced vernacularized Sanskrit to reach wider audiences, as evidenced by texts discovered in Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Maharashtra. Once the audience became familiar with the easier to understand vernacularized version of Sanskrit, those interested could graduate from colloquial Sanskrit to
12986-412: The foundation of Vyākaraṇa, a Vedānga . The Aṣṭādhyāyī was not the first description of Sanskrit grammar, but it is the earliest that has survived in full, and the culmination of a long grammatical tradition that Fortson says, is "one of the intellectual wonders of the ancient world". Pāṇini cites ten scholars on the phonological and grammatical aspects of the Sanskrit language before him, as well as
13137-537: The gods Varuna, Mitra, Indra, and Nasatya found in the earliest layers of the Vedic literature. O Bṛhaspati, when in giving names they first set forth the beginning of Language, Their most excellent and spotless secret was laid bare through love, When the wise ones formed Language with their mind, purifying it like grain with a winnowing fan, Then friends knew friendships – an auspicious mark placed on their language. — Rigveda 10.71.1–4 Translated by Roger Woodard The Vedic Sanskrit found in
13288-452: The growing Hindu, Buddhist and Jain influence. The 14th century Sarva-Darshana-Sangraha , a compendium of the Indian philosophical systems, makes no mention of Ajivikas, which indicates the decline of their sect. Ājīvikas competed with and debated the scholars of Buddhism, Jainism, and Vedic's. The Ājīvika movement is primarily known from historical references left behind in Jain and Buddhist sources, that may therefore be hostile to it. It
13439-509: The height of their prominence in the late 1st millennium BCE, then declined, yet continued to exist in south India until the 14th century CE, as evidenced by inscriptions found in southern India. Ancient texts of Buddhism and Jainism mention a city in the 1st millennium BCE named Savatthi (Sanskrit Śravasti ) as the hub of the Ājīvikas; it was located near Ayodhya in what is now the North Indian state of Uttar Pradesh . In later part of
13590-431: The historic Sanskrit literary culture and the failure of new Sanskrit literature to assimilate into the changing cultural and political environment. Sheldon Pollock states that in some crucial way, "Sanskrit is dead ". After the 12th century, the Sanskrit literary works were reduced to "reinscription and restatements" of ideas already explored, and any creativity was restricted to hymns and verses. This contrasted with
13741-770: The ideas of Ajivika influenced Buddhism and various schools of Vedic thought. Riepe provides an example of an influential Ajivika theory, namely, its theory on atomism. Basham proposes that Ajivikas may have possibly influenced the doctrines of the Dvaita Vedanta sub-school of medieval Vedic philosophy. According to the 4th century Buddhist legend Ashokavadana , the Mauryan emperor Bindusara and his chief queen Shubhadrangi were believers of this philosophy, which reached its peak of popularity during this time. Ashokavadana also mentions that, after his conversion to Buddhism, Bindusara's son Ashoka issued an order to kill all
13892-486: The intense change that must have occurred in the pre-Vedic period between the Proto-Indo-Aryan language and Vedic Sanskrit. The noticeable differences between the Vedic and the Classical Sanskrit include the much-expanded grammar and grammatical categories as well as the differences in the accent, the semantics and the syntax. There are also some differences between how some of the nouns and verbs end, as well as
14043-432: The largest cultural heritage that any civilization has produced prior to the invention of the printing press. — Foreword of Sanskrit Computational Linguistics (2009), Gérard Huet, Amba Kulkarni and Peter Scharf Sanskrit has been the predominant language of Hindu texts encompassing a rich tradition of philosophical and religious texts, as well as poetry, music, drama , scientific , technical and others. It
14194-483: The last three non-matter. These elements are akata (that which is neither created nor destroyed), vanjha (barren, that which never multiplies or reproduces) and have an existence independent of the other. The elements, asserts Ajivika theory in the Tamil text Manimekalai, are made of paramanu (atoms), where atoms were defined as that which cannot be further subdivided, that which cannot penetrate another atom, that which
14345-412: The linguistic expression and sets the standard for the Sanskrit language. Pāṇini made use of a technical metalanguage consisting of a syntax, morphology and lexicon. This metalanguage is organised according to a series of meta-rules, some of which are explicitly stated while others can be deduced. Despite differences in the analysis from that of modern linguistics, Pāṇini's work has been found valuable and
14496-514: The literary works. The Indian tradition, states Winternitz , has favored the learning and the usage of multiple languages from the ancient times. Sanskrit was a spoken language in the educated and the elite classes, but it was also a language that must have been understood in a wider circle of society because the widely popular folk epics and stories such as the Ramayana , the Mahabharata ,
14647-511: The modern age include the Samaveda , Yajurveda , Atharvaveda , along with the embedded and layered Vedic texts such as the Brahmanas , Aranyakas , and the early Upanishads . These Vedic documents reflect the dialects of Sanskrit found in the various parts of the northwestern, northern, and eastern Indian subcontinent. According to Michael Witzel, Vedic Sanskrit was a spoken language of
14798-429: The more advanced Classical Sanskrit. Rituals and the rites-of-passage ceremonies have been and continue to be the other occasions where a wide spectrum of people hear Sanskrit, and occasionally join in to speak some Sanskrit words such as namah . Classical Sanskrit is the standard register as laid out in the grammar of Pāṇini , around the fourth century BCE. Its position in the cultures of Greater India
14949-401: The most advanced analysis of linguistics until the twentieth century. Pāṇini's comprehensive and scientific theory of grammar is conventionally taken to mark the start of Classical Sanskrit. His systematic treatise inspired and made Sanskrit the preeminent Indian language of learning and literature for two millennia. It is unclear whether Pāṇini himself wrote his treatise or he orally created
15100-602: The most archaic poems of the Iranian and Greek language families, the Gathas of old Avestan and Iliad of Homer . As the Rigveda was orally transmitted by methods of memorisation of exceptional complexity, rigour and fidelity, as a single text without variant readings, its preserved archaic syntax and morphology are of vital importance in the reconstruction of the common ancestor language Proto-Indo-European . Sanskrit does not have an attested native script: from around
15251-409: The mountains of what is today northern Afghanistan across northern Pakistan and into northwestern India. Vedic Sanskrit interacted with the preexisting ancient languages of the subcontinent, absorbing names of newly encountered plants and animals; in addition, the ancient Dravidian languages influenced Sanskrit's phonology and syntax. Sanskrit can also more narrowly refer to Classical Sanskrit ,
15402-435: The northwest in the late Bronze Age . Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hinduism , the language of classical Hindu philosophy , and of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism . It was a link language in ancient and medieval South Asia, and upon transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia in the early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture , and of
15553-545: The numbers are thought to signify a wish to be aligned with the prestige of the language. Sanskrit has been taught in traditional gurukulas since ancient times; it is widely taught today at the secondary school level. The oldest Sanskrit college is the Benares Sanskrit College founded in 1791 during East India Company rule . Sanskrit continues to be widely used as a ceremonial and ritual language in Hindu and Buddhist hymns and chants . In Sanskrit,
15704-431: The observation that determinism has become widely accepted as compatible with free will. "The idea that free will can be reconciled with the strictest determinism is now very widely accepted. To say that a man acted freely is, it is often suggested, to say that he was not constrained, or that he could have done otherwise if he had chosen, or something else of that kind; and since these things could be true even if his action
15855-548: The oldest surviving cave temples of ancient India, and are called the Barabar Caves in Jehanabad district of Bihar . The Barabar caves were carved out of granite, has a highly polished internal cave surfaces, and each consists of two chambers, the first is a large rectangular hall, the second is a small, circular, domed chamber. These were probably used for meditation. The Ashokan dedications of several Barabar Caves to
16006-604: The only cave in which the word Ajivikehi remains intact is among the three caves where Ananta-varman installed a Hindu image. Based on similarities of carvings at the Barabar and the Udaygiri Caves , scholar A. Banerji Sastri theorized that the Kalinga monarch Kharavela (1st-2nd century BCE) evicted the Ajivikas to favour Jains, but Basham finds this evidence inconclusive. According to Basham, any ruler of Magadha between
16157-403: The oral transmission of the texts is reliable: they are ceremonial literature, where the exact phonetic expression and its preservation were a part of the historic tradition. However some scholars have suggested that the original Ṛg-veda differed in some fundamental ways in phonology compared to the sole surviving version available to us. In particular that retroflex consonants did not exist as
16308-429: The origin of the universe is simply what philosophers mean by the more common term "determinism." Others have suggested that the term " self-determination " be used to describe actions as merely "determined" by an agent's reasons, motives, and desires. When various interpretation of the word predeterminism can be defined even better by other terms, such as the aforementioned determinism, predestination, or fatalism, then
16459-436: The original Gosāla, who was Mahavira's companion, was once dead and that the soul now inhabiting the apparent Gosāla in front of him was a reanimated, different Gosala. This argument was declared a form of sophistry by Mahavira, and this led to a significant break in the relations between the two. Several rock-cut caves belonging to Ājīvikas are dated to the times of the Mauryan emperor Ashoka (r. 273 BCE to 232 BCE). These are
16610-477: The original inscriptions being deep, they remain easily decipherable. After the decline of the Maurya Empire in the 2nd century BCE, the Ajivikas find only occasional mentions in the Sanskrit literature and do not appear to have been serious rivals to other sects. The final version of the Buddhist and Jain scriptures were compiled at a later period, but the description of Ajivikas in these texts likely represents
16761-406: The other, and I will an act that brings it about. I knew that I could choose either. That means that I had the power to choose either.' Hobart supports the existence of alternative possibilities for action and the capability to do otherwise. And he clearly prefers "determination" to "determinism." Hobart's article is frequently misquoted as "Free Will as Involving Determinism." Philippa Foot
16912-431: The other." Reinöhl further states that there is a symmetric relationship between Dravidian languages like Kannada or Tamil, with Indo-Aryan languages like Bengali or Hindi, whereas the same relationship is not found for non-Indo-Aryan languages, for example, Persian or English: A sentence in a Dravidian language like Tamil or Kannada becomes ordinarily good Bengali or Hindi by substituting Bengali or Hindi equivalents for
17063-513: The otherwise inexplicable fact that the Ājīvikas did practice asceticism. [...] [T]he popularity of the Ājīvika doctrine in ancient times, such that it could rival that of both Jainism and Buddhism, also make sense if this doctrine was really not so radically different from these traditions as its presentation in Jain and Buddhist sources suggests. Paul Dundas states that the Jain and Buddhist texts cannot be considered reliable source of Ājīvika history and philosophy, because "it seems doubtful whether
17214-450: The philosophy of free will . The term predeterminism suggests not just a determining of all events, but the prior and deliberately conscious determining of all events (therefore done, presumably, by a conscious being). Due to this, predeterminism and the similar term determinism are easily and often confused or associated with ideas ranging, for instance, from the physicalist (and often scientific) notion of causal determinism to even
17365-529: The political elites in some of these regions. As a result, Sanskrit had a lasting impact on the languages of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, especially in their formal and learned vocabularies. Sanskrit generally connotes several Old Indo-Aryan language varieties. The most archaic of these is the Vedic Sanskrit found in the Rigveda , a collection of 1,028 hymns composed between 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE by Indo-Aryan tribes migrating east from
17516-414: The possible influence of Dravidian on Sanskrit is only one of many items of syntactic assimilation, not least among them the large repertoire of morphological modality and aspect that, once one knows to look for it, can be found everywhere in classical and postclassical Sanskrit". The main influence of Dravidian on Sanskrit is found to have been concentrated in the timespan between the late Vedic period and
17667-469: The premise that good simple living is not a means to salvation or moksha , just a means to true livelihood, predetermined profession and way of life. The name came to imply that school of Indian philosophy which lived a good simple mendicant-like livelihood for its own sake and as part of its predeterministic beliefs, rather than for the sake of after-life or motivated by any soteriological reasons. Some scholars spell Ajivika as Ajivaka. Ājīvika philosophy
17818-439: The previous 1,500 years when "great experiments in moral and aesthetic imagination" marked the Indian scholarship using Classical Sanskrit, states Pollock. Scholars maintain that the Sanskrit language did not die, but rather only declined. Jurgen Hanneder disagrees with Pollock, finding his arguments elegant but "often arbitrary". According to Hanneder, a decline or regional absence of creative and innovative literature constitutes
17969-480: The problems of interpretation and misunderstanding. The purifying structure of the Sanskrit language removes these imperfections. The early Sanskrit grammarian Daṇḍin states, for example, that much in the Prakrit languages is etymologically rooted in Sanskrit, but involves "loss of sounds" and corruptions that result from a "disregard of the grammar". Daṇḍin acknowledged that there are words and confusing structures in Prakrit that thrive independent of Sanskrit. This view
18120-609: The regional Prakrit languages, which makes it likely that the interaction, the sharing of words and ideas began early in the Indian history. As the Indian thought diversified and challenged earlier beliefs of Hinduism, particularly in the form of Buddhism and Jainism , the Prakrit languages such as Pali in Theravada Buddhism and Ardhamagadhi in Jainism competed with Sanskrit in the ancient times. However, states Paul Dundas , these ancient Prakrit languages had "roughly
18271-497: The relationship between various Indo-European languages, the origin of all these languages may possibly be in what is now Central or Eastern Europe, while the Indo-Iranian group possibly arose in Central Russia. The Iranian and Indo-Aryan branches separated quite early. It is the Indo-Aryan branch that moved into eastern Iran and then south into South Asia in the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE. Once in ancient India,
18422-562: The role of language, the ontological status of painting word-images through sound, and the need for rules so that it can serve as a means for a community of speakers, separated by geography or time, to share and understand profound ideas from each other. These speculations became particularly important to the Mīmāṃsā and the Nyaya schools of Hindu philosophy, and later to Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism, states Frits Staal —a scholar of Linguistics with
18573-496: The same relationship to Sanskrit as medieval Italian does to Latin". The Indian tradition states that the Buddha and the Mahavira preferred the Prakrit language so that everyone could understand it. However, scholars such as Dundas have questioned this hypothesis. They state that there is no evidence for this and whatever evidence is available suggests that by the start of the common era, hardly anybody other than learned monks had
18724-438: The scientist, then one could say merely that the fetus's characteristics are determined by heredity, rather than pre determined. Predeterminism necessarily implies, at the very least, a passive but all-knowing observer, if not an active planner, designer, or manipulator (of the fetus's personal characteristics). This basic scientific idea of hereditary determination, though, already fulfills the definition of causal determinism ,
18875-556: The semi-nomadic Aryans . The Vedic Sanskrit language or a closely related Indo-European variant was recognized beyond ancient India as evidenced by the " Mitanni Treaty" between the ancient Hittite and Mitanni people, carved into a rock, in a region that now includes parts of Syria and Turkey. Parts of this treaty, such as the names of the Mitanni princes and technical terms related to horse training, for reasons not understood, are in early forms of Vedic Sanskrit. The treaty also invokes
19026-615: The social structures such as the role of the poet and the priests, the patronage economy, the phrasal equations, and some of the poetic metres. While there are similarities, state Jamison and Brereton, there are also differences between Vedic Sanskrit, the Old Avestan, and the Mycenaean Greek literature. For example, unlike the Sanskrit similes in the Ṛg-veda, the Old Avestan Gathas lack simile entirely, and it
19177-504: The soul is formless, Ajivikas asserted the soul has a material form, one that helps meditation. They also believed the soul passes through many births and ultimately progresses unto its pre-destined nirvana (salvation). Basham states, that some texts suggest evidence of Vaishnavism -type devotional practices among some Ajivikas. Ajivikas developed a theory of elements and atoms similar to the Vaisheshika school of Vedic's. Everything
19328-405: The term Ajivika ( Acuva ) refers to Jains in this context, and some others—such as A. Chakravarti—doubt the equivalence of the terms "Ajivika" and "Acuva". However, Basham believes that these inscriptions indeed refer to the Ajivikas and that they may have survived there until the 15th century, as suggested by the writings of Vaidyanatha Dikshita . The Ajivikas may have completely declined because of
19479-440: The theological (and often religious) notion of predestination . A secular example to try to illustrate predeterminism is that a fetus's future physical, emotional, and other personal characteristics as a matured human being may be considered "predetermined" by heredity, i.e. derived from a chain of events going back long before their eventual birth. However, one of the difficulties with defining predeterminism using this example
19630-653: The turn of the 1st-millennium CE, it has been written in various Brahmic scripts , and in the modern era most commonly in Devanagari . Sanskrit's status, function, and place in India's cultural heritage are recognized by its inclusion in the Constitution of India 's Eighth Schedule languages . However, despite attempts at revival, there are no first-language speakers of Sanskrit in India. In each of India's recent decennial censuses, several thousand citizens have reported Sanskrit to be their mother tongue, but
19781-440: The two had a falling out and parted ways. According to the Bhagvati Sutra , Makkhali Gosala met with Mahāvīra again later in life, but Gosala asserted to Mahavira that he was not the same person. Makkhali Gosala referred to the example of a sesame plant which "had been pulled up, and had temporarily died, but it had been replanted and thus reanimated, becoming once more living, while the seven pods had developed". Gosāla declared that
19932-408: The variants in the usage of Sanskrit in different regions of India. The ten Vedic scholars he quotes are Āpiśali, Kaśyapa , Gārgya, Gālava, Cakravarmaṇa, Bhāradvāja , Śākaṭāyana, Śākalya, Senaka and Sphoṭāyana. In the Aṣṭādhyāyī , language is observed in a manner that has no parallel among Greek or Latin grammarians. Pāṇini's grammar, according to Renou and Filliozat, is a classic that defines
20083-564: The vernacular Prakrits. Many Sanskrit dramas indicate that the language coexisted with the vernacular Prakrits. The cities of Varanasi , Paithan , Pune and Kanchipuram were centers of classical Sanskrit learning and public debates until the arrival of the colonial era. According to Lamotte , Sanskrit became the dominant literary and inscriptional language because of its precision in communication. It was, states Lamotte, an ideal instrument for presenting ideas, and as knowledge in Sanskrit multiplied, so did its spread and influence. Sanskrit
20234-402: The Ājīvika were perhaps misrepresented by Jain and Buddhist sources. [ Johannes Bronkhorst's ] claim is that, whereas the Jains teach that one can both stop the influx of new karma and rid oneself of old karma through ascetic practice, Gosāla taught that one could only stop the influx of new karma. [...] Ascetic practice can be effective in preventing further karmic influx, which helps to explain
20385-458: The Ājīvikas is not well known, and it is even unclear if they were a divergent sect of the Buddhists or the Jains. Original scriptures of the Ājīvika school of philosophy may once have existed, but these are currently unavailable and probably lost. Their theories are extracted from mentions of Ājīvikas in the secondary sources of ancient Indian literature . The oldest descriptions of the Ājīvika fatalists and their founder Gosāla can be found both in
20536-502: The Ṛg-veda is distinctly more archaic than other Vedic texts, and in many respects, the Rigvedic language is notably more similar to those found in the archaic texts of Old Avestan Zoroastrian Gathas and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey . According to Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton – Indologists known for their translation of the Ṛg-veda – the Vedic Sanskrit literature "clearly inherited" from Indo-Iranian and Indo-European times
20687-408: Was a spoken language ( bhasha ) used by the cultured and educated. Some sutras expound upon the variant forms of spoken Sanskrit versus written Sanskrit. Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang mentioned in his memoir that official philosophical debates in India were held in Sanskrit, not in the vernacular language of that region. According to Sanskrit linguist professor Madhav Deshpande, Sanskrit
20838-427: Was a spoken language in a colloquial form by the mid-1st millennium BCE which coexisted with a more formal, grammatically correct form of literary Sanskrit. This, states Deshpande, is true for modern languages where colloquial incorrect approximations and dialects of a language are spoken and understood, along with more "refined, sophisticated and grammatically accurate" forms of the same language being found in
20989-515: Was acceptable to hold religious faith in the absence of evidence for or against that faith. James referred to Miller as "my most penetrating critic and intimate enemy." Nearly 25 years after James' death, R. E. Hobart published a short article in Mind in 1934 that is considered one of the definitive statements of determinism and compatibilism . It was entitled Free Will as Involving Determination and Inconceivable Without It . Hobart's compatibilism
21140-472: Was adopted voluntarily as a vehicle of high culture, arts, and profound ideas. Pollock disagrees with Lamotte, but concurs that Sanskrit's influence grew into what he terms a "Sanskrit Cosmopolis" over a region that included all of South Asia and much of southeast Asia. The Sanskrit language cosmopolis thrived beyond India between 300 and 1300 CE. Today, it is believed that Kashmiri is the closest language to Sanskrit. Reinöhl mentions that not only have
21291-738: Was also the language of some of the oldest surviving, authoritative and much followed philosophical works of Jainism such as the Tattvartha Sutra by Umaswati . The Sanskrit language has been one of the major means for the transmission of knowledge and ideas in Asian history. Indian texts in Sanskrit were already in China by 402 CE, carried by the influential Buddhist pilgrim Faxian who translated them into Chinese by 418 CE. Xuanzang , another Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, learnt Sanskrit in India and carried 657 Sanskrit texts to China in
21442-538: Was an atheistic philosophy. Its adherents did not presume any deity as the creator of the universe, or as prime mover, or that some unseen mystical end was the final resting place of the cosmos. In later texts, the Tamil Nīlakēci , a story of two divinities, Okkali and Ōkali, relates the Ājīvikas instructed men in the scriptures. Ajivikas believed that in every being, there is a soul (Atman). However, unlike Jains and various orthodox schools of Hinduism that held that
21593-614: Was composed of minuscule atoms, according to Ajivikas, and qualities of things are derived from aggregates of atoms, but the aggregation and nature of these atoms were predetermined by cosmic forces. The description of Ajivikas' atomism is inconsistent with those described in Buddhist and Vedic texts. According to three Tamil texts, the Ajivikas held there exists seven kayas (Sanskrit: काय, assemblage, collection, elemental categories): pruthvi-kaya (earth), apo-kaya (water), tejo-kaya (fire), vayo-kaya (air), sukha (joy), dukkha (sorrow), and jiva (life). The first four relate to matter,
21744-414: Was declining rapidly. In some of the Barabar Caves inscriptions, the words referring to the Ajivikas appear to have been defaced, although the rest of the text appears intact. The selective nature of these defacements suggests that they were carried out by the religious rivals of the Ajivikas. This defacement must have taken place when the Brahmi script had still not been forgotten, likely some time before
21895-500: Was determined it seems that there could be room for free will even within a universe completely subject to causal laws." Foot doubted that the ordinary language meaning of saying our actions are "determined" by motives has the same meaning as strict physical determinism, which assumes a causal law that determines every event in the future of the universe. She notes that our normal use of "determined" does not imply universal determinism. "For instance, an action said to be determined by
22046-587: Was mere juxtapositions of atoms of various types, and the combinations occur always in fixed ratios governed by certain cosmic rules, forming skandha (molecules, building blocks). Atoms, asserted the Ajivikas, cannot be seen by themselves in their pure state, but only when they aggregate and form bhutas (objects). They further argued that properties and tendencies are characteristics of the objects. The Ajivikas then proceeded to justify their belief in determinism and "no free will" by stating that everything experienced— sukha (joy), dukkha (sorrow), and jiva (life)—is
22197-861: Was one of the main interests of the Ajivikas. Their views on this subject may have been influenced by Vedic sources, such as the hymn to Kala (Time) in Atharvaveda . Both Jaina and Buddhist texts state that Ājīvikas believed in absolute determinism, absence of free will, and called this niyati . Everything in human life and the universe, according to Ajivikas, was pre-determined, operating out of cosmic principles, and true choice did not exist. The Buddhist and Jaina sources describe them as strict fatalists, who did not believe in karma . The Ajivikas philosophy held that all things are preordained, and therefore religious or ethical practice has no effect on one's future, and people do things because cosmic principles make them do so, and all that will happen or will exist in future
22348-403: Was similar to earlier landmark positions by Thomas Hobbes and David Hume , as refined in the 19th-century compatibilist views of John Stuart Mill , Henry Sidgwick , and F. H. Bradley . But unlike them Hobart explicitly did not endorse strict logical or physical determinism, and he explicitly did endorse the existence of alternative possibilities , which can depend on absolute chance . He
22499-459: Was the son of Mankha, a professional mendicant. His mother was Bhaddā. His name Gosala "cowshed" refers to his humble birthplace. While Bhaddā was pregnant, she and her husband Mankhali, the mankha, came to the village ... of Saravaṇa, where dwelt a wealthy householder Gobahula. Mankhali left his wife and his luggage ... in Gobahula's cowshed ( gosālā ) ... Since he could find no shelter elsewhere
22650-442: Was visualized as "pervading all creation", another representation of the world itself; the "mysterious magnum" of Hindu thought. The search for perfection in thought and the goal of liberation were among the dimensions of sacred sound, and the common thread that wove all ideas and inspirations together became the quest for what the ancient Indians believed to be a perfect language, the "phonocentric episteme" of Sanskrit. Sanskrit as
22801-594: Was writing just a few years after the discovery of quantum mechanics and indeterminacy , and also makes passing mention of the ancient "swerve" of the atoms espoused by Epicurus : 'I am not maintaining that determinism is true...it is not here affirmed that there are no small exceptions, no slight undetermined swervings, no ingredient of absolute chance.' '"We say," I can will this or I can will that, whichever I choose". Two courses of action present themselves to my mind. I think of their consequences, I look on this picture and on that, one of them commends itself more than
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