Makkhali Gosala, Makkhali-gosāla, Makkhaligosala, Makkhaligosāla: 4 definitions
Introduction:
Makkhali Gosala means something in Buddhism, Pali, Hinduism, Sanskrit. If you want to know the exact meaning, history, etymology or English translation of this term then check out the descriptions on this page. Add your comment or reference to a book if you want to contribute to this summary article.
In Hinduism
General definition (in Hinduism)
Makkhali Gosala was an ascetic teacher of ancient India, often identified as a leader of the Ajivika movement. He was a contemporary of Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, and of Mahavira, the last and 24th Tirthankara of Jainism.
etymology: Makkhali Gosala or Makkhali Gossala (Pāli; BHS: Maskarin Gośāla; Jain Prakrit sources: Gosala Mankhaliputta)
In Buddhism
Theravada (major branch of Buddhism)
One of the six heretical teachers contemporaneous with the Buddha. He held (*1) that there is no cause, either ultimate or remote, for the depravity of beings or for their rectitude. The attainment of any given condition or character does not depend either on ones own acts, nor on the acts of another, nor on human effort. There is no such thing as power or energy or human strength or human vigour. All beings (satta), all lives (pana), all existent things (bhuta), all living substances (jiva), (*2) are bent this way and that by their fate, by the necessary conditions of the class to which they belong, by their individual nature; it is according to their position in one or other of the six classes (abhijati) that they experience ease or pain.
There are fourteen hundred thousands of principle genera or species (pamukhayoniyo), again six thousand others and again six hundred. There are five hundred kinds of kamma - there are sixty two paths (or modes of conduct), sixty two periods, six classes among men, eight stages of a prophets existence (atthapurisabhumi), (*3) forty nine hundred kinds of occupation, forty nine hundred Ajivakas, forty nine hundred Wanderers (Paribbajaka), forty nine hundred Naga abodes (or species), two thousand sentient existences (vise indriyasate), three thousand infernal states, thirty six celestial, mundane or passionate grades (rajodhatuyo), seven classes of animate beings (sannigabbha), or beings with the capacity of generating by means of separate sexes, seven of inanimate production (asannigabbha), seven of production by grafting (niganthagabbha), seven grades of gods, men, devils, great lakes, precipices, dreams.
(*1) D.i.53 f. Makkhali, his views and his followers are also referred to at M.i.231, 238, 483, 516f.; S.i.66, 68; iii.211; iv.398; A.i.33f., 286; iii.276, 384; also J.i.493, 509; S.iii.69 ascribes the first portion of the account of Makkhalis views (as given in D.i.53) that there is no cause, no reason for depravity or purity to Purana Kassapa. A.i.286 apparently confounds Makkhali with Ajita Kesakambala, and A.iii.383f. represents Purana Kassapa as though he were a disciple of Makkhali.
(*2) Buddhaghosa (DA.i.160 ff.) gives details of these four classes showing how they are meant to include all that has life on this earth, from men down to plants. But the explanation is very confused and makes the terms by no means mutually exclusive.
(*3) Buddhaghosa gives them as babyhood, playtime, trial time, erect time, learning time, ascetic time, prophet time, and prostrate time, with (very necessary) comments on each.
There are eighty four thousand periods during which both fools and wise alike, wandering in transmigration, shall at last make an end of pain. This cannot be done by virtue, or penance, or righteousness.
Theravāda is a major branch of Buddhism having the the Pali canon (tipitaka) as their canonical literature, which includes the vinaya-pitaka (monastic rules), the sutta-pitaka (Buddhist sermons) and the abhidhamma-pitaka (philosophy and psychology).
Languages of India and abroad
Pali-English dictionary
makkhaligosāla (မက္ခလိဂေါသာလ) [(pu) (ပု)]—
[makkhali+gosāla]
[မက္ခလိ+ဂေါသာလ]
[Pali to Burmese]
makkhaligosāla—
(Burmese text): မက္ခလိဂေါသာလ ဆရာကြီး။ (မက္ခလိသည် ရှင်တော်ဂေါတမနှင့် ခေတ်ပြိုင်ဆန့်ကျင်ဘက်ဖြစ်သည့် ပူရဏကဿပစသော တိတ္ထိဆရာကြီး ၆-ဦးတို့တွင် တစ်ဦးအပါအဝင်ဖြစ်သည်။ သူသည် ရွံ့ညွန်ရှိရာမြေပေါ်၌ ဆီအိုးကို ယူသွားခိုက် သခင်က ＂ချစ်သား မချော်လဲစေနှင့်＂ဟု ကြိုတင်သတိပေးပါလျက် ချော်လဲခဲ့ရာ သခင်ကို ကြောက်ရွံ့၍ ထွက်ပြေးမည့်ဟန်ပြင်စဉ် သခင်က အနီးသို့ပြေးသွားပြီး ပုဆိုးစွန်းကို ဆွဲကိုင်လိုက်လေသည်။ သူသည် ပုဆိုးချွတ်ထားခဲ့၍ ကိုယ်တုံးလုံးနှင့်ထွက်ပြေးသွားပြီးနောက် အဝတ်မဝတ်ဘဲ နေလေသည်။ ယင်းသို့နေသဖြင့် လူအများက အလိုနည်းသူ ရဟန္တာဟု ထင်မှတ်ကာ ကြည်ညိုကိုးကွယ် ဆည်းကပ်ကြကုန်၏။ ထိုအခါမှစ၍ နောက်လိုက်တပည့်သာဝကများ တဖြည်းဖြည်း တိုးပွါးလာရာ ၅-ရာအထိ ရှိလာသည့်အတွက် အစေလကတိတ္ထိယဆရာကြီးအဖြစ်သို့ ရောက်ရှိသွားလေသည်။ ＂မာခလိ- မချော်လဲစေနှင့်＂ဟူသော စကားကို အစွဲပြု၍ ＂မက္ခလိ＂ဟူသောအမည်ကို ပဌမရရှိသည်။ ဂေါသာလရွာသားဖြစ်သောကြောင့် တစ်နည်း နွားခြံ၌ မွေးဖွားသောကြောင့် ＂ဂေါသာလ＂ဟူသော ဒုတိယအမည်ကို ထပ်ဆင့်ရရှိသည်။ ဒီ၊ ဋ္ဌ၊ ၁။ ၁၃၁။ သာရတ္ထ၊ ၃။ ၃၈၃။ ယင်းပုဂ္ဂိုလ်သည် သာဝတ္ထိအနီး သာရဝါန၌ မွေးဖွားသည်။ သူ့ဖခင်၏အမည်မှာ မင်္ခလိဖြစ်၍ မိခင်မှာ ဘဒ္ဒါဖြစ်သည်။ သူ့ဖခင်မှာ မင်္ခ=အရုပ်ကားရောင်းချသူ,နွားများစွာမွေးသူ,နွားများစွာပိုင်ဆိုင်သူဖြစ်၍ သားဖြစ်သူကို ဂေါသာလမင်္ခလိပုတ္တဟု ခေါ်သည်ဟူသော ဥဗာသကဒသာအိုခေါ် ဂျိန်းကျမ်းစာ၏ အဆိုကိုလည်းကောင်း၊ မစကရိ ()သာ ၎င်း၏အမည်ရင်းဖြစ်ဟန်တူသည်။ မစကရိ()=ဝါးတောင်ဝှေးကိုင်သူဟု ပါဏိနီဆရာ အနက်ဆိုသည်ဟူသော ဒေါက်တာဘရူးဝါး၏ အဆိုကိုလည်းကောင်း ဒီပီပီအန် ၌ ဖော်ပြထားသည်)။
(Auto-Translation): Makkhaliga, the Great Teacher. (Makkhali is one of the six teachers of Purana Kassapa, who is a contemporary counterpart to the venerable Gotama. He was warned by his master, "My beloved, do not run away," as he went to take a pot of oil from the ground and was frightened at the thought of running away. In an attempt to flee, he approached his master, grasping for a piece of cloth. He ran away completely naked after leaving the cloth behind. As he remained that way, people considered him to be a hermit and began to worship him. From that moment on, followers of the hermit gradually increased until they reached five hundred, thus he arrived at the status of the teacher of the Makkhali sect. The phrase "Makkhali - do not run away" became a point of reference for his name "Makkhali." Because he was a descendant of Gotama and was born in a cow pen, he received the secondary name "Gotama." (Reference: Di, Dth, 1. 131; Tarakkha, 3. 383) This individual was born near the city of Taravana. His father's name was Makkhali and his mother's was Badanda. His father was a seller of wooden figures, owned and raised many cows, and was referred to as Gotama Makkhali according to the reference in the Uvattha Kadha. The same account can be found in texts that reference him as "one who holds the staff" according to Doctor Bruware's commentary, as well as being mentioned in Dipi Pi'pi'an.)
Pali is the language of the Tipiṭaka, which is the sacred canon of Theravāda Buddhism and contains much of the Buddha’s speech. Closeley related to Sanskrit, both languages are used interchangeably between religions.
See also (Relevant definitions)
Partial matches (+0): Makkhali, Goshala.
Full-text (+4): Maskarin, Ajivika, Kappu, Mo qu li qu she li, Mahaditthena Sutta, Sahali, Nanatitthiya Sutta, Makkhali, Mankhaliputta, Manthaliputra, Manthali, Zheng ming lun, Barabar, Kisasankicca, Culasaropama Sutta, Titthayatana, Mo jia li ju she li, Satthar, Sandaka Sutta, Samannaphala Sutta.
Relevant text
Search found 25 books and stories containing Makkhali Gosala, Makkhali-gosāla, Makkhaligosala, Makkhaligosāla; (plurals include: Makkhali Gosalas, gosālas, Makkhaligosalas, Makkhaligosālas). You can also click to the full overview containing English textual excerpts. Below are direct links for the most relevant articles:
Dhammapada (Illustrated) (by Ven. Weagoda Sarada Maha Thero)
Verse 318-319 - The Story of the Disciples of Non-Buddhist Teachers < [Chapter 22 - Niraya Vagga (Hell)]
Verse 167 - The Story of a Young Monk < [Chapter 13 - Loka Vagga (World)]
Verse 294-295 - The Story of Venerable Bhaddiya < [Chapter 21 - Pakiṇṇaka Vagga (Miscellaneous)]
Theravada Buddhist studies in Japan (by Keiko Soda)
2. Historical background of the rise of Buddhism < [Chapter 2 - Theravada, Hinayana and Early Buddhism (critical study)]
Lakulisha-Pashupata (Philosophy and Practice) (by Geetika Kaw Kher)
Appendix 2 - An Enquiry into the Sectarian Affiliation of the Ruins at Harwan
Evidence of Ajivika cult in Kashmir < [Chapter 2 - Spread and Transition]
Maha Buddhavamsa—The Great Chronicle of Buddhas (by Ven. Mingun Sayadaw)
Part 2 - The Sandal-Wood Bowl < [Chapter 24 - The Buddha’s Sixth Vassa at Mount Makula]
Part 1 - Singular Opportunity of Living in an Age when a Buddha appears < [Chapter 2 - Rare Appearance of a Buddha]
Part 1 - Story of King Ajātasattu < [Chapter 37 - Story of King Ajātasattu]
Lay-Life of India as reflected in Pali Jataka (by Rumki Mondal)
Part 7 - Religious Conditions of ancient India < [Chapter 3 - Reflection of Indian Lay-life in the Jātakas]
Bihar and Eastern Uttar Pradesh (early history) (by Prakash Narayan)
Jati (status on account of birth) < [Chapter 4 - Social Process, Structures and Reformations]