Explanation:

• In many passages of the Buddhist scriptures, we read of six unorthodox teachers, each of whom was the leader of an important body of ascetics and lay followers.
• In one passage of the Digha Nikaya short paragraphs are quoted that purport to give the basic tenets of their systems.
• A glance at these will give some impression of the diversity of the doctrines that were propagated by the ascetic groups of the time.
• The first of the teachers mentioned, Purana Kassapa, was an ‘antinomian’ who believed that virtuous conduct had no effect on a man’s karma.
• The second heretic, Makhali Gosala (Gosala Maskariputra), was the leader of the sect of Ajivikas, which survived for some two thousand years after the death of its founder.
• The third heterodox teacher, Ajita Kesakambalin, was a materialist.
• The passage in which his views are given is one of the earliest expressions of complete unbelief in immaterial categories in the history of world thought.
• Pakudha Kathyayana, the fourth of the six, was an atomist, a predecessor of the Hindu Vaisesika school, putting forward his theories probably a century or more before Democritus in Greece developed a similar doctrine of eternal atoms.
• The fifth teacher, Nigantha Nataputta (Nirgrantha Jnataputra).
• was none other than Vardhamana Mahavira, the leader of the sect of Jainas.
• The sixth and last, Sanjaya Balatthipura, was a sceptic, who denied the possibility of certain knowledge altogether.