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BUDDHISM that a council of the Brethren should be called for the purpose of rehearsing and establishing the precepts of their departed Master. Five hundred arhiats i assembled at Rājagțha (the ancient capital of Magadha) and in the course of a session that lasted seven months fixed the l'inaya (“Discipline") and Dhamma (Skr. Dharma, “Law"). But when in conclusion they issued a proclamation of their work, there came a celebrated monk named Purāņa ("The Old One"), with live hundred followers, who refused to adhere to the resolutions of the Council. “The doctrine and the disciplinary rule have been well sung by the Elders," he admitted courteously; "nevertheless, even in such manner as it has bcen heard by me, and received by me from the very mouth of the Blessed One, in that manner will I bear it in my memory." And neither the Elders nor the recorders of the episode pronounced a single word of rebuke against this manifestation of independence.1"
A second Buddhist (ouncil reported in the Pāli canon is supposed to have been assembled one hundred (or one hundred and ten) years following the parinirvāņa of the Buddha, at Vaišāli (modern Basarh, in the Ilajipur subdivision of the Muzaffarpur District of Bihar Province),20 for the purpose of condemning ten heretical practices of the monks of that vicinily. The precise nature of the practices cannot be determined from the brief notices of them given in the record, where they are described simply by such designations as “two fingers," "another village," "dwelling-place," etc.,21 but they seem to
18 An arhat is a Buddhist monk who has attained enlightenment.
18 Cullavagga 11. 11; as cited by L. de la Vallée Poussin, "Councils and Synods (Buddhist)," in Hastings, Encyclopacdia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. IV, p. 181.
20 This is the ancient city near which Vardhamana Mahāvīra, the last of the Jaina Tirthankaras (cf. supra, pp. 221-222), is supposed to have been born.
21 Cullavagga 12.
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