The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c29.15

v1.c29.15

At this point we should doubtless interpolate a series of events which were of high importance for the spread of Buddhism, and which, though not mentioned by the emperor himself, are among all the legendary matter that has gathered round his name the portion best entitled to credence. It is in the nineteenth year from Açoka's coronation, the twenty-first according to a proposed chronological emendation, that the Mahāvaṃsa, the Pāli history of Buddhism in India and Ceylon, places the Third Council, held under the emperor's patronage in the Açokārāma at Pāṭaliputra. The Council, occasioned by sectarian differences among the Buddhist confession, of which as many as eighteen divisions are named, was held under the presidency of a famous monk, named Moggaliputta Tissa, to be distinguished from another Tissa mentioned in the same accounts as brother and viceroy of Açoka: in the northern texts he is called Upagupta. It deliberated during a period of nine months; and its ultimate decision is stated to have been in favour of the school of the Sthaviras, which afterwards prevailed in Ceylon. This remarkable gathering, though ignored by the northern Buddhists, can hardly be a fiction: it represents the culmination of the earlier form of Buddhism, which with the ensuing expansion was destined to undergo a profound modification of spirit. The canon of authoritative scriptures is stated to have been on this occasion definitely closed; and in the Kathāvatthu, composed at the time by Upagupta, we have a full record of the divergencies of opinion which led to its convention. Its dismissal was the signal for an organisation of the missionary activity which was already, as we have seen, included in the policy of Açoka. The names of the chief evangelisers of the different provinces are carefully preserved to us. To Kashmīr and Gandhāra was sent Madhyantika, and to the Yavana or Greek country (Bactria?), Mahārakshita; southern India, in its several provinces, claimed the apostles Mahādeva (Mahishamaṇḍala), Rakshita (Vanavāsa), Dharmarakshita a Yavana (Aparāntaka), and Mahādhar-marakshita (Mahārāshṭra); Majjhima proceeded to the Himālaya regions, and the fraternal pair Soṇa and Uttara, linked by the common vicissitudes of more than a single existence, to Suvarṇa-bhūmi, or a part of further India. That these are no mere legendary names we are permitted to know from some of the earliest surviving monuments of Buddhism, the *stūpas* of Sānchī, dating from the second, or first, century B.C., where relics of some of them have actually come to light¹. But their fame has been eclipsed by that of the saints entrusted with the conversion of Ceylon, who are said to have been no other than Açoka’s own children, his son the monk Mahendra and his daughter the nun Saṅghamitrā². Accompanied by the *sthaviras* Ṛishṭriya, Utriya, Çambala, and Bhadrasāra, they received a becoming welcome from the king of Ceylon, Devānāmpiya Tissa, who with his people was ultimately converted, and founded in honour of the evangelists the Great Vihāra, thenceforward the headquarters of Singhalese Buddhism. The special history of the island falls outside the scope of this chapter: the mission of the princely pair was treasured in the memory of Indian Buddhism; and its dispatch has been supposed to be depicted in a fresco on a wall in one of the caves of Ajantā³.