The History of Buddhist Thought c11.s2.20

c11.s2.20

We thus cannot be certain what all the points of dispute were about, but the list does not appear to be an arbitrary invention. The probability is that it records a real set of practices which were once in dispute, but it is also probable that their condemnation at the Council is mere inference. This is all the more likely when we find that Vasumitra, in his account of the first schism,¹ gives an entirely different reason for the origin of the Mahāsanghikas. It was due, he says, to five points of doctrine about the nature and attainments of the arahat, which were brought forward by a certain Mahādeva. These five points need not be inventions any more than the ten points, as they appear again later, but they show that one party or other (or both) knew nothing of what took place at the second Council.