without forming a hostile party, yet continued, I imagine, to retain within the united church some particular usages of the old one . As those rigid rules formed no part of the ancient creed, and Mahavira, therefore, must have introduced them, it is probable that he borrowed them from the Akelakas or Agivikas, the followers of Gosala, with whom he is said to have lived in close companionship for six years practising austerities. We may regard Mahavira's adoption of some religious ideas and practices of the Agivikas as concessions made to them in order to win over Gosala and his disciples. This plan seems to have succeeded for some time; but at last the allied teachers quarrelled, it may be supposed, on the question who was to be the leader of the united sects. Mahavira's position apparently was strengthened by his temporary association with Gosala, but the latter seems to have lost by it, if we are to believe the account of the Gainas, and his tragic end must have been a severe blow to the prospects of his sect.

Mahavira probably borrowed much more from other sects than we shall ever be able to prove. It must have been easy to add new doctrines to the Gaina creed, as it scarcely forms a system in the true sense of the word. Each sect, or fraction of a sect, which was united with the Gaina church by the successful policy of Mahavira , may have brought with it some of its favourite speculations, and most probably its favourite saints too, who were recognised as Kakravartins or Tirthakaras. This is, of course, a mere conjecture of mine; but it would account for the strange hagiology of the Gainas, and in the absence of any trace of direct evidence we are driven to rely upon guesses, and those deserve the preference which are the most

plausible. For the rest, however, of the hypotheses which I have tried to establish in the preceding pages, I claim a higher degree of probability. For on the one hand I do no violence to the tradition of the Gainas, which in the absence of documents deserves most careful attention, and on the other, I assume but what under the given circumstances would have been most likely to happen. The cardinal feature in my construction of the early history of the Gaina church consists in my turning to account the alleged existence of followers of Parsva in the time of Mahavira, a tradition which seems to be almost unanimously accepted by modern scholars.