Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s27.1

c11.s27.1

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*’.