By Jit Majumdar
Sometimes transliterated as: Ajivika, AjivIka, AAjivika
- without life; without livelihood
- an ancient (now extinct) philosophical and wandering ascetic movement of the Indian subcontinent, who preceded the Buddhists and Jains in origin but were a foremost contemporary rival of those traditions and of the Brahminical tradition, who followed a philosophy of fatalism, determinism, and extreme asceticism, and who were mostly atheists but also occasionally theists.
