The History of Buddhist Thought c11.s3.15

c11.s3.15

V. A. Smith remarks that Asoka after he had been reigning for some thirty years issued a fresh series of documents, the seven Pillar Edicts, which reiterate his earlier teaching, and conclude with a formal retrospect of the measures adopted by him in furtherance of the ethical reforms which he had at heart. Yet he seems surprised that there is no mention of the Council of Buddhist elders.¹ Mrs. Rhys Davids accepts the Council, but subjects the evidence for it to the severest criticism, pointing out first that the evidence is six or seven centuries later than the Council. She also holds that it was a Congress rather than a Council, that the " collection of the Dhamma " was a " gigantic task of revision ", that the actual revisers and judges were not a thousand but only eight,¹ that as the revision of the English Prayer-book took twenty years, the Council must have taken much longer than nine months, and that as the first thesis in the *Kathāvatthu* concerns the *puggala*, the question of paramount importance to be discussed must have been that of *attan* versus *an-attan*. The " drastic expulsion of ordained monks " can only have been carried through after the Council, not before, as the Chronicles say. In fact, the Council was a Congress, and every fact about it was different from what is recorded.²