Ajivika is best understood as a religio-philosophical tradition rather than as mere abstract speculation. It possessed an organized community of renunciant monks, communal discipline, and rules of conduct, all oriented toward a soteriological goal: liberation from the cycle of rebirth. In this respect it stood alongside early Buddhism and Jainism as a distinct, non-Vedic religious movement, complete with its own doctrines, ascetic practices, and monastic order. Contemporary sources recognized it as an independent religious tradition, not simply a school of thought within another framework.

What gives Ajivika its particular flavor is the radical doctrine of *niyati*, or Fate. This strict determinism held that everything in the cosmos, including human actions and spiritual liberation, is absolutely predetermined and unfolds according to a fixed order. From this standpoint, individual effort or moral striving cannot alter the destined course of transmigration. The denial of genuine free will and the rejection of karma’s efficacy set Ajivika apart from many other Indian paths, which typically affirm that intentional action shapes one’s future.

Yet this determinism did not lead to passivity in practice; rather, it was woven into a demanding ascetic lifestyle. Ajivika communities cultivated rigorous renunciation and monastic discipline, embodying a religious life grounded in the conviction that even their own austerities were expressions of an inexorable cosmic pattern. Their cosmological vision included vast, cyclical processes within which beings moved according to fate, and their communal structures gave concrete form to this vision in everyday conduct. In this way, Ajivika functioned as a full-fledged religious belief system, in which metaphysical determinism and lived spiritual discipline were inseparably intertwined.