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Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s27: Tradition : Third Council

Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s27

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Tradition : Third Council

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Tradition helps us to eke out these meagre references to the doings of the great king in his long reign, though it is often characterised by grotesque exaggeration, and some of it is doubtless pure invention¹. The *Dīpavaṃsa* contains the earliest account we possess of the third Buddhist council held in the reign of Aśoka¹. That monarch's patronage of Buddhism resulted in the enrichment of the Sangha and the relative impoverishment of other faiths; many adherents of the neglected creeds, ‘Ājīvakas and sectarians of different descriptions’ to the number of sixty thousands, began to wear the yellow robe and dwell together with the *bhikshus* in the Aśokārāma for the sake of the revenue; they proclaimed their own heresies as the doctrines of the Buddha and caused much confusion by their unruly behaviour. This went on for a period of seven years during which ‘the *uposatha* ceremonies were performed by incomplete congregations’, ‘saintly, clever and modest men’ not making their appearance at them. At last, Aśoka summoned to his aid the venerable Moggaliputta Tissa who was living at that time in solitary retreat to escape the confusion prevailing in Aśokārāma; under Tissa's presidency a council was held at which all the adherents of the false doctrine who had stealthily attached themselves to the Sangha were unfrocked, compelled to put on white robes and expelled, the Theravāda was firmly established and the great *thera* Tissa ‘set forth the treatise belonging to the Abhidhamma, which is called *Kathāvatthu*’.

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¹ Some stories from the Aśoka cycle have been touched upon already, particularly in the notes. The execution by the king's own hand of five hundred ministers for their refusing to carry out the order to cut down all fruit trees and flower plants and look after the thorny trees ; and the burning alive of five hundred women of the harem for their having denuded an Aśoka tree to spite the king who bore its name (*Divyāvadāna* p. 373-4) are just edifying invention meant to stress the good effects of the conversion on Aśoka ; the number 500 gives the show away. The construction of 84,000 stūpas and the distribution of Buddha relics among them (*Divy.* 380-1), the number representing the sections of Dharma according tot he Ceylonese books (DV. vi, 86-99), and Queen Padmāvatī bringing forth Kuṇāla on the day on which the stūpas were completed (*Divy.* p. 405) can hardly be accepted at face value. The story of Vitāśoka, the brother of Aśoka, (*Div.* xxviii pp. 419-29) may also be only edifying legend with no historical basis. The brother is at first devoted to the Tirthyas and accuses the Bauddha monks of being pleasure-lovers ; to teach him a lesson, Aśoka gets his ministers to entice Vitāśoka into assuming the insignia of royalty, condemns him to death as a traitor, and then grants him a seven days' respite, during which all the amenities of royalty are permitted to him ; fear of death made all enjoyment impossible to him during

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¹ DV. 7. 34-59; MV. 5. 288-82; *Samantapāsādikā* in Oldenberg *Vin. Pit.* iii pp. 282 ff. esp. p. 312 for white robes given to degraded monks.

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the period, and then, being convinced that Bauddha monks who meditated on the death of hundreds of beings could not be pleasure seekers, he became one of them himself. Later, Aśoka ordered all the *nirgranthas* (also called Ājīvakas *Div.* p. 427) of Puṇḍravardhana to be beheaded, offering reward to those who did so, because they had painted the Buddha as prostrating before a *nirgrantha* image: Vitāśoka also fell a victim to this persecution as he was mistaken for a *nirgrantha*: in his grief at this occurrence, Aśoka allowed himself to be persuaded to declare immunity from fear for all creatures in his realms. This story is clearly a clumsy invention meant to account for the well-known fact that Aśoka promoted *ahiṃsā*. The celebrated story of Kuṇāla losing his eyes by the machination of his step-mother Tiṣyarakṣitā whose illicit passion for him he failed to reciprocate, and his miraculous recovery, is also a legend: the revenge of ‘women whose love is scorned’ is a popular motif (Penzer, *Ocean of Story*, ii. p. 120) and the name of the woman ‘Protected by Tiṣya’ is suspicious, for Tiṣya we have good reason to think was the asterism of Aśoka's birth or *abhiṣeka* (*JRAS* 1909 pp. 28—34). If this is accepted, Tiṣyarakṣitā's jealousy of the bodhi tree, her attempted destruction of it and its effects on the king, and the revival of both would also be mythical though some of the scenes are known to be represented in sculpture on the *toraṇas* of Sāñchī. (*Monuments of Sāñchi*, Marshall and Foucher pp. 212—3). Aśoka's gift of everything he had including the whole earth to the Sangha to make up the 100 crores he had promised, the concern of Sampadi, the heir-apparent, and the ministers at this extravagance, and the steps they took to stop the effects of Aśoka's dotage, and his last gift of half a myrobalan which was all that was left to him to the Kukuṭārāma—are likewise legends of pious fame.

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The Council comprised one thousand of the best Arhats, was held under the King's protection, and lasted nine months.

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This Council was held according to tradition at the end of 236 years after the Buddha's death (*Dīpavaṃsa*) and in the seventeenth year of the reign of Aśoka (*Mahāvaṃsa*). But there is no mention of the Council in the Seventh Pillar Edict ; this has led some scholars to discredit the entire story of the third Council. This, however, is not easy in the face of the edict against schism (*saṅghabheda*) which strikingly corroborates the account of the Council ; and judging by the position of its Kauśāmbī version on the Allahabad pillar, it was issued some time after the Seventh Pillar Edict and fell towards the end of the reign ; the Council must have been held about the same time.

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