Ājīvika school ［アージービカ派・邪命外道］ (, Pali;  Ājībika-ha or Jamyō-gedō): A religious school in ancient India during Shakyamuni’s time. The Ājīvika school is said to have been as prosperous and influential as Buddhism and Jainism. It continued to flourish until the Maurya dynasty that began in the late fourth century b.c.e., and then it gradually declined. Ājīvika was a name used disparagingly by Buddhists to mean one who performs religious practice in order to earn a living. The Sanskrit word ājīva means livelihood. In the Chinese translations of Buddhist scriptures, Ājīvika is rendered as “the school of false livelihood.” Makkhali Gosāla, one of the six non-Buddhist teachers, was well known as the leader of the Ājīvika school. The doctrine of this school is known only from descriptions found in Buddhist and Jain texts. The school held a completely deterministic and fatalistic view of the nature of existence, asserting that all events are predetermined by fate, and that the will and actions of human beings are totally ineffective in altering the course of their transmigration. Nevertheless, the followers of this school practiced asceticism as Jain followers did. The school existed in southern India until the fourteenth century.