monks became increasingly divided over wisdom,
practice, conduct, and religious goals. The ongoing his-
tory of the san ̇gha presents a tug-of-war between, on
the one hand, individuals or groups seeking to con-
serve what they considered the core of S ́akyamuni’s re-
ligion, and on the other hand, the continuing need to
conform to changing social, cultural, political, and
economic structures.
The first example of such a battle comes from the
stories of S ́akyamuni’s own life, when his cousin,
DEVADATTA, attempted to supplant him as the san ̇gha’s
leader. The sources suggest that this rebellion was swiftly
quashed by S ́ARIPUTRAand MAHAMAUDGALYAYANA,
S ́akyamuni’s chief disciples. After S ́akyamuni’s death,
however, a more comprehensive strategy was needed to
keep the san ̇gha whole. That strategy is contained in the
legend of a First Council: a convocation held in the city
of Rajagrha during the first summer after S ́akyamuni’s
death. Buddhist traditions claim that this council was
comprised of five hundred monks, all arhats. It was
presided over by Mahakas ́yapa, an early convert and the
most accomplished monk still alive. The purpose of this
council was to recollect all S ́akyamuni’s teachings, and
thus to establish the discourses (sutra), monastic rules
(VINAYA), and formal doctrines (ABHIDHARMA) that
would sustain the unified san ̇gha in S ́akyamuni’s ab-
sence. Scholars do not regard narratives about this
council as historically credible. Nevertheless, one can
certainly see its rhetorical value. Buddhists could af-
firm that within one year of S ́akyamuni’s final nirvana,
all of his pronouncements were recited, confirmed as
the legitimate BUDDHAVACANA(WORD OF THE BUD-
DHA) by a congregation of perfect men, and set in their
appropriate canonical baskets.
Schism after schism (fourth through second
century B.C.E.)
The same institutional memory that lauds this “or-
thodox” meeting also tells of other, “dissident” monks,
who rejected the council’s authority. Accordingly, even
if scholars knew that a council of elite disciples really
did convene in the year after S ́akyamuni’s death, they
still could not reckon how many subgroups existed
within the san ̇gha that followed a dharma and vinaya
owing nothing to Rajagrha’s convocation. The meet-
ing held in Rajagrha is remembered as only the first of
several. As time progressed, the ideally unified san ̇gha
splintered into numerous disparate sects (nikaya), each
claiming to faithfully preserve S ́akyamuni’s dharma
and vinaya. It is difficult to give a precise account of
these later councils, for each sect relates this history
from its own biased point of view. Nevertheless, the
most important of these later councils can be dated to
approximately one hundred years after S ́akyamuni’s
death, and placed in the north Indian city of Vais ́al.
At issue were several practices of Vais ́al’s san ̇gha,
which some from outside the city considered violations
of the vinaya. With the exception of Theravada mate-
rials, all other sources agree that the dispute was re-
solved and that the “lax practices” of the Vais ́almonks
were declared unacceptable, a verdict apparently ac-
cepted by the Vais ́almonks themselves. Thus, for the
time being, the unity of the san ̇gha was restored.
Some time after the council at Vais ́al, however, a
more far-reaching dispute erupted, which resulted in
the first schism in the Buddhist community: a division
between one group that styled itself the Sthaviravada
(Pali, THERAVADA; The Teaching of the Elders) and a
second group that called itself the MAHASAMGHIKA
SCHOOL(The Great Assembly, or “Majorityists”). Ac-
counts vary as to the cause of the dispute; according to
some, the disagreement was occasioned by the so-called
five points of a certain Mahadeva, which concerned the
fallibility of the ARHAT. It now seems more plausible,
however, that these points arose later and occasioned
a schism within the Mahasamghika subgroup itself.
More likely is that the original dispute was provoked
by the addition of some new vinaya rules by the group
that styled themselves the “Elders,” which were rejected
by the more conservative Mahasamghikas. In any
event, the division between the Mahasamghika and the
Sthaviravada is universally accepted within the tradi-
tion as the first real schism to split the Buddhist com-
munity. All the schools that subsequently emerged
within Indian Buddhism are offspring of one of these
two main groups.
The schism between the Mahasamghika and the
Sthaviravada was but one example of centrifugal forces
that had long been present in the san ̇gha. Multiple
claims to authority, differences of language, of location,
and of monastic rules, as well as burgeoning differences
over doctrine and religious practice all contributed to
the further division of the san ̇gha into numerous
nikayas,as the Sthaviravada and Mahasamghika sects
both ruptured internally. Though the absolute num-
ber of nikayasis not known, it is popularly held that
several centuries after S ́akyamuni’s nirvana, the
san ̇gha had split into eighteen separate nikayas.Some
of these nikayaswere distinguished by little more than
geography, others by unique doctrines, and still oth-
ers in terms of their ritual practice. Each nikayapos-
sessed its own canon, grounding its own profession ofINDIA