India · fl. 6th–5th c. BCE
Ajita Kesakambalī
Materialist teacher of the Buddha’s time, named for his hair blanket
Wrote nothing that survives. As reported in the Buddhist Sāmaññaphala Sutta, he taught that a person is made of four elements that disperse at death, so there is no fruit of good or bad deeds and no other world.
Life and thought
Ajita Kesakambalī—“Ajita of the hair blanket”, after the garment of human hair he reportedly wore—was one of six famous wandering teachers active in the Ganges valley in the Buddha’s lifetime, in the 5th century BCE. None of his own words survive. We know him only through his rivals: the Pali Sāmaññaphala Sutta, in which King Ajātasattu reports what each teacher told him, and later Jain sources.
As reported there, Ajita taught a thoroughgoing materialism. A person is made of earth, water, fire and air; at death these return to their elements and the senses scatter into space. There is no other world, no fruit of good or bad deeds and no rebirth: fools and wise alike, the sutta has him say, are cut off and perish when the body breaks up. Gifts and sacrifices are therefore pointless. Buddhists made this the classic case of “annihilationism”, the wrong view that denies moral consequence, and later Indian authors treated him as a forerunner of the Cārvāka or Lokāyata school.