The Second Council
At the Second Council, one hundred years later, it was not the
dharma that was called into question but the monks' code of rules
or vinaya. This resulted in the formation of the Sthaviravadin
and Mahasanghika schools. Opinions differ on the cause of the
split: the Sthaviravadins described their opponents as lax monks
who had ceased to follow all the vinaya rules, while the Mahasanghikas
argued that the Buddha had never intended a rigid adherence to
all the minor rules. Apart from Pali sources, an important independent
account of this split is found in the Shariputra-pariprccha (The
Enquiry of Shariputra), an eclectic text of Indic origin, which
differs radically from the received Theravadin version. According
to this version, the Mahasanghikas were not the defeated party,
but the conservative party that preserved the original vinaya
unchanged against the reformist attempts of the Sthaviras to
establish a reorganized and stricter version.
However, after this initial division, more were to follow. Schism
in early Buddhism was typically not on points of doctrine (orthodoxy),
but in the area of practice (orthopraxy). So if two schools shared
a vinaya, but were in dispute over doctrinal matters, it was likely
that they would continue to practice together. However, if one
group disputed the vinaya of another, this would often prevent
common practice.
3rd Century BCE
In the 3rd century BCE, Theravadin sources state that a Third Council
was convened under the patronage of Emperor Ashoka, but since
no mention of this council is found in other sources and because
of various implausible features in this account, most scholars
treat the historicity of this Third Council with skepticism although
it is generally accepted that one or several disputes did occur
during Asoka's reign, involving both doctrinal and vinaya matters,
although these are likely to have been too informal to be called
a Council.
However, according to the Theravadin account,
this Council was convened primarily for the purpose of establishing
an official
orthodoxy. At the council, small groups raised questions about
the specifics of the vinaya and the interpretation of doctrine.
The chairman of the council, Moggaliputta Tissa, compiled a book
called the Kathavatthu, which was meant to refute these arguments.
The council sided with Moggaliputta and his version of Buddhism
as orthodox; it was then adopted by Emperor Ashoka as his empire's
official religion. This school of thought was termed Vibhajjavada
(Pali), literally "Teaching of Analysis". The version
of the scriptures that had been established at the Third Council,
including the vinaya, sutta and the abhidhamma commentaries (collectively
known as Tripitaka), was taken to Sri Lanka by Emperor Ashoka's
son, the Venerable Mahinda. There it was eventually committed to
writing in the Pali language. The Pali Canon remains the only complete
set of Nikaya scriptures to survive, although fragments of other
versions exist.
Whatever might be the truth behind the Theravadin account, it
was around the time of Asoka that further divisions began to occur
within the Buddhist movement and a number of additional schools
emerged, including the Sarvastivada and the Sammitiya. All of these
early schools of Nikayan Buddhism eventually came to be known collectively
as the Eighteen Schools in later sources. Unfortunately, with the
exception of the Theravada, none of early these schools survived
beyond the late medieval period by which time several were already
long extinct, although a considerable amount of the canonical literature
of some of these schools has survived, mainly in Chinese translation.
Moreover,the origins of specifically Mahayana doctrines may be
discerned in the teachings of some of these early schools, in particular
in the Mahasanghika and the Sarvastivada.
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