The History of Buddhist Thought c10.80

c10.80

There was no hierarchy, but seniority was reckoned by the number of years from ordination, nor did a central authority exist to check any tendency to change or development in new directions. It is possible, says Oldenberg, that in the early period after Buddha’s death the personal authority of the disciples who had been nearest to the Master may have tended to repress any serious schism; but a state of things resting on personal influence, not on the sure structure of legal institutions, bears in itself the germ of dissolution. Against this it is possible to maintain that a legal system seeking to enforce its authority over a wide area would have been the very thing to produce violent reaction and opposition. What we find, in fact, for a long period is not dissolution but gradual development. Schools arose, but of their origin we have little definite knowledge, and it is in those which have survived that we find the lines of the development of Buddhist thought.