Ajivika arose as a distinct śramaṇa movement in ancient northern India, within the same fertile spiritual landscape that witnessed the early development of Buddhism and Jainism. Its emergence is generally placed around the 6th to 5th century BCE, in the eastern Gangetic plain, especially in regions such as Magadha and Kosala. This was a time marked by intense religious questioning and philosophical experimentation, when many seekers turned away from Vedic ritualism and the authority of Brahmanical tradition. Within this broader ascetic milieu, Ajivika took shape as one of several heterodox paths exploring alternative visions of spiritual life and cosmic order.

Tradition associates the origin of this school with Makkhali Gosāla (also known as Maskarin Gosāla), a wandering ascetic regarded as a contemporary of the Buddha and Mahāvīra. Accounts portray him as initially connected with Mahāvīra before establishing an independent community and teaching. Under his name, Ajivika articulated a radical doctrine of niyati, or absolute determinism, asserting that all events, including spiritual progress, unfold according to an unalterable fate rather than individual effort. In this way, the movement offered a strikingly different response to the existential concerns of the age, emphasizing submission to an inexorable cosmic order rather than moral causality or ascetic striving as the primary engine of liberation.

Ajivika thus can be seen as both a child of and a challenger within the śramaṇa culture of the Gangetic plain. Sharing with other renunciant traditions a critique of Vedic sacrifice and social hierarchy, it nevertheless charted its own path by insisting on the supremacy of fate over human agency. The name “Ajivika,” derived from the term for “livelihood” or “mode of life,” reflects the distinctive ascetic lifestyle through which its adherents sought to embody this worldview. In the interplay of these early Indian movements, Ajivika stands as a reminder that the spiritual search in that era did not move in a single line, but branched into multiple, sometimes starkly contrasting, visions of how the cosmos is ordered and how a seeker might live within it.