Early Monastic Buddhism v2.c29.s1.20

v2.c29.s1.20

The principal points of resemblance between the followers and their preceptors were the ties that bound them together but these were the points which constituted the features by which the chief qualities of the preceptors were distinguished. These distinctions among them did not lie in any differences of doctrines which they professed but in the degrees of proficiency attained by each, in particular directions of Buddhistic *sādhana*. But the divisions though not proceeding from radical differences in doctrine grew stereotyped in course of time, and fusion between them later on became an impossibility due to the separatist frame of mind that their existence as separate bodies naturally developed. Thus the division which had commenced without any doctrinal differences gradually gave rise to the latter and grew into full-fledged schools.