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Group 7 background

Background and History Buddhism is a religion and philosophy that was founded around 5 century BC. According to the scriptures, soon after the Parinivana of the Buddha, the first Buddhist council was held. As with any ancient Indian tradition, standard of teaching was done orally.

As the Sangha gradually grew over the next century a quarrel arose regarding ten points of discipline. A second Buddhist Council (said in the scriptures to have taken place 100 years after the Buddha's death) was held to courage the points at contention. The result was that all the monks agreed that those 10 practices were not allowed according to him to Vinaya.

At some period after the Second Council however, the Sangha began to break into separate factions. The various accounts differ as to when the actual schisms occurred: according to the Dipavamsa of the Pali tradition, they started immediately after the Second Council; the Puggalavada tradition places it in 137 AN; the Sarvastivada tradition of Vasumitra says it was in the time of Asoka; and the Mahasanghika tradition places it much later, nearly 100 BCE.

The Asokan edicts, our only contemporary sources, state that 'the Sangha has been made unified'. This apparently refers to a dispute such as that described in the account of the Third Buddhist Council at Pataliputta. This concerns the expulsion of non-Buddhist heretics from the Sangha, and does not speak of a schism. These schisms occurred //within// the traditions of Early Buddhism, at a time when the Mahayana movement either did not exist at all, or only existed as a current of thought not yet identified with a separate school.

The root schism was between the Sthaviras and the Mahasanghikas. The fortunate survival of accounts from both sides of the dispute reveals disparate traditions. The Sthavira group offers two quite distinct reasons for the schism. The Dipavamsa of the Theravada says that the losing party in the Second Council dispute broke away in protest and formed the Mahasanghika. This contradicts the Mahasanghikas' own vinaya, which shows them as on the same, winning side. On the other hand, the northern lineages, including the Sarvastivada and Puggalavada (both branches of the ancient Sthaviras) attribute the Mahasanghika schism to the '5 points' that erode the status of the arahant. For their part, the Mahasanghikas argued that the Sthaviras were trying to //expand// the Vinaya; they may also have challenged what they perceived to be excessive claims or inhumanly high criteria for Arhatship. Both parties, therefore, appealed to tradition. The Sthaviras gave rise to several schools, one of which was the Theravada school.