Origins of Secret Mantra • Day Five
3 August 2026
On Day Four the Gyalwang Karmapa had discussed how the origins of the split are described in the Pāli Vinaya Piṭaka of the Southern transmission, with special reference to the twelfth section of the Minor Topics (Pāli. Cullavagga). On Day Five he discussed the split into schools and the criticism of other schools found in the historical texts of the Pāli tradition of the Southern transmission.
The fifth chapters of both the Dīpavaṃsa (Chronicle of the Island) and the Mahāvaṃsa (The Great Chronicle) and the background stories from Buddhaghosa’s Commentary on the Points of Controversy (Pāli. Kathāvatthu-aṭṭhakathā) not only describe the origins of the Mahāsāṃghika school but also describe the development of the eighteen schools and give details of the division into other schools. They criticize the Mahāsāṃghika severely for rewriting the scriptures and accuse them of fabrication.
The Difference Between a Great Banyan Tree and Thorns
The Sri Lankan histories employ a powerful analogy likening the Theravāda (Skt. Sthaviravāda) school to a great banyan tree with stable roots and spreading limbs: the schools that have split away—all those other than the Sthaviravāda school—are likened to thorns growing on the tree, demeaning them. Further, these texts, compiled by masters of the Mahāvihāra school of the Southern transmission, insist that it was only the Vibhajjavādins who upheld the Buddha’s teachings without mistake during the first, second and third councils. The Mahāvihāra school of the Southern transmission belonged to the Vibhajjavāda tradition. [They were linked to the old Theravāda (Skt. Sthaviravāda) school and were the predecessors of the modern-day Theravāda.]
Criticism of the Mahāsāṃghikas for Rewriting the Three Pitakas
The old Sri Lankan manuscripts criticize the Mahāsāṃghika for rewriting the three Pitakas. (Pāli Tipiṭaka; Skt: Tripiṭaka). This is described in the Dīpavaṃsa which gives an account of events during the Second Council. Verses 32-33 describe how the Mahāsāṃghika monks disrupted the Second Council:
The Mahāsāṃghika sangha disrupted the actual Council and held a different one. They separated scriptures that had been gathered in one section, destroying the original intention of the Five Nikāyas [the collections of sutras] and the Vinaya.
The Mahāsāṃghika sangha, having seceded from the Second Council, formed their own council with 10,000 monks, the Great Council.
The criticism continues in v. 34–35:
They did not understand which of the Buddha’s teachings were provisional teaching and which were not provisional, what was taught explicitly and what was taught implicitly. Due to this, following the expedient meaning of the Buddha only, they explained his intent incorrectly. Tangling the words, they destroyed much of the true meaning.
Basically, they ruined the Buddha’s teachings.
v.36: They discarded profound passages from the Sutras and Vinaya and wrote new pseudo sutras and vinaya.
The Dīpavaṃsa lists six different Dharma texts removed from the Buddhist corpus by the Mahāsāṃghika:
v. 37: They discarded many of the following scriptures: parts of the Parivāra (supplemental text of the Vinaya), the six treatises of Abhidharma, the Paṭisambhidāmagga (Path of Discrimination), Niddesa (Exposition), and Jātaka (Birth Stories), and they wrote new scriptures.
Then in the 38th stanza, it says:
They discarded the original grammar of the words, gender, abbreviations, and so forth and changed it all haphazardly.
The Karmapa explained that this verse indicates that the Mahāsāṃghika used a language that was not the same as the language used by the Sthaviravādins. In other words, it was mixed up with the local dialect, which led to grammatical differences.
Although most contemporary scholars maintain that the primary cause for the split into schools was differences over the practice of the Vinaya [c.f. the controversy over the Ten Points], not philosophy, the Dīpavaṃsa suggests there were other issues too. There were also disputes over the Abhidharma, the Sutras, and the languages which could be used.
The Third Council
The Southern transmission dates the original split into schools to the time of the Third Council during the reign of Aśoka. This Third Council is not the same as the one found in the Tibetan tradition, which took place at the time of King Kaniṣka. The Sri Lankan histories record this Third Council in the Dīpavaṃsa (Chronicle of the Island), Mahāvaṃsa (The Great Chronicle), the Samantapāsādikā (All-pleasing), which is Buddhaghosa’s commentary on the Pāli Vinaya Piṭaka, and other texts. However, it is only mentioned in the scriptures of the Sri Lankan Theravāda school and is not mentioned in the scriptures of any other school. Consequently, this council is only found in the Sri Lankan Theravāda tradition and is not clearly explained in any other tradition.
According to the Sri Lankan histories, the Second Council was held one hundred years after the Buddha’s parinirvāṇa. This was during the reign of King Kālāśoka (Black Aśoka). Then, two hundred and eighteen years after the Buddha’s parinirvāṇa, during the reign of the Dharma King Aśoka, Moggaliputtatissa, supported by Aśoka, led the Third Council.
However, the Northern transmission text The Wheel Distinguishing the Differences Between the Scriptural Traditions states that Aśoka appeared one hundred years after the Buddha’s parinirvāṇa and does not mention that a third council was held then.
The Difference between Kālāśoka and Aśoka
The Karmapa explained that there had been some confusion between Kālāśoka and Aśoka among many early historians from Tibet, as well as historians from other countries. Aśoka translates into Tibetan as Nya-Ngan-Mey (མྱ་ངན་མེད།), and Kālāśoka as Nya-Ngan-Mey-Nag-Po (མྱ་ངན་མེད་ནག་པོ།), but historians had mistaken them for the same person. Because of this mistake, they had to assert that it was Aśoka who sponsored the Second Council. Most contemporary researchers, however, clearly explain that they are actually two completely different people.
Some Tibetans and others have argued that Kālāśoka and Dharma King Aśoka are one and the same person: in the first part of his life, after killing so many people, he was called Kālāśoka, Black Aśoka, but later, after he became a devout Buddhist, he was called the Dharma King Aśoka.
The historical record contradicts this view. It is not a matter of the first and second part of someone’s life but of two different people. Kālāśoka was a king of the Śiśunāga dynasty, who appeared around 100 years after the Buddha’s parinirvāṇa. He probably reigned in the fourth century BCE and one of his legacies is that he sponsored the Second Council. Dharma King Aśoka was part of the Mauryan dynasty and reigned during the third century BCE. At that time, just over 200 years had passed since the Buddha’s parinirvāṇa. He is the emperor who united most of the Indian subcontinent, the Aśoka who erected the famous Aśokan pillars with their inscriptions, and, according to the accounts of the Southern transmission, he was the main sponsor of the Third Council.
False Monks and the Interruption of Uposatha (Sojong)
According to the accounts in the Dīpavaṃsa and the Mahāvaṃsa, because the Dharma King Aśoka revered the sangha so highly, he supported them generously and the sangha community became prosperous. This led to greed and envy from non-Buddhists and others who also wanted that food and wealth. Although they had never taken monastic vows, they disguised themselves as monks in order to access this bounty. [The Pāli term for these imposters is theyyasaṃvāsaka—someone who lives with monks clandestinely.] They dressed like monks and infiltrated the sangha but they held non-Buddhist views and their conduct contradicted the rules of the Vinaya. The influx of these pseudo-monks led to a proliferation of wrong views, the destruction of the vinaya discipline, and disharmony within the sangha. As a consequence, at the Kukkuṭārāma monastery in Pāṭaliputra [Emperor Aśoka’s capital city], the monks who still kept pure discipline were unable to hold the uposatha (sojong) ceremony for over seven years.
Differentiating Orthodox from Heterodox: The Net of Vibhajjavāda
With Emperor Aśoka’s support, in order to pacify the dispute in the sangha, Moggaliputtatissa convened the sangha to examine the different philosophical positions. In order to determine who was a true monk and who was an imposter, the monks were questioned on their view. Those monks who replied “the Buddha was a ‘Vibhajjavādin’”—someone who makes distinctions when he speaks—were determined to be true monks. Those who responded that the Buddha was categorically an eternalist or a nihilist were judged to hold non-Buddhist views. The latter were defrocked and expelled from the sangha.
“Vibhajjavādin” means “someone who makes distinctions”; someone who avoids the view that the nature of phenomena is categorically one thing or the other. They distinguish between relative and ultimate truth when giving explanations. For that reason, the Theravādins of Sri Lanka called themselves Vibhajjavādins to highlight the differences between their position and that of other Buddhist schools in central India such as the Sarvāstivāda and Mahāsāṃghika. For example, the Sarvāstivādins held the view that the three times exist substantially. Thus, the Vibhajjavādin view is similar to the distinctions found in Middle Way texts which speak of how other schools fall into extremes.
Questioning the Authenticity of Moggaliputtatissa’s Kathāvatthu (Points of Controversy)
[The Kathāvatthu is one of the seven books in the Theravāda Abhidhamma Pitaka. The Kathāvatthu-aṭṭhakathā is Buddhaghosa’s commentary on it.]
According to the tradition, after Moggaliputtatissa had cleansed the sangha and expelled the fake monks, he wrote the Points of Controversy (Pāli.Kathāvatthu) to refute the wrong views of other schools. Then he summoned one thousand arhats who gathered to hold a “Dharma Council” that lasted for nine months, during which time they once again recompiled the sutras. This is the event described as the “Third Council” in the Theravāda texts from Sri Lanka.
The texts of other schools do not mention it at all, so contemporary researchers posit either it was not held in this way or, if it was held, other Buddhist schools did not accept it. They suggest it was basically an internal council of the Sthaviravāda.
As to the Points of Controversy, purportedly written by Moggaliputtatissa during the time of Emperor Aśoka, according to the research of contemporary scholars, the contents do not support this chronology. The text contains refutations of 217 different views, and, problematically, many of these views were held by Buddhist schools that appeared in southern India after the reign of Emperor Aśoka. For example, it refutes views held by the Andhra, the Pūrvaśailas (Eastern Mountain School), the Aparaśaila (Western Mountain School), and so forth.
Thus, according to researchers, the modern form of the Points of Controversy could not date from the time of the “Third Council” and the time of Emperor Aśoka [3rd century BCE]; it must date from at least a hundred years after Emperor Aśoka, or perhaps even later. They assert that the basic seed was written by Moggaliputtatissa, but it was expanded and new material added in the latter part of the second century BCE or perhaps even later. This raises further questions about the chronology of the “Third Council”. If the Points of Controversy is related to the “Third Council”, then that “Third Council” itself could only have been held in the second century BCE. It could not have been held earlier than that.
The Split into Sub-schools
Early Buddhism began with a unified sangha. At the time of the original split, it divided into two schools, the Sthaviravāda and the Mahāsāṃghika. After that, as these two schools expanded, the followers broke into different factions. As Vinītadeva wrote in the Summary of the Different Schools (Skt. Nikāyabhedopadarśana-nāma-saṃgraha), found in the Tengyur;
From differences of place, meaning, and teachers,
In the end there were eighteen schools.
The word for school in Pāli is nikāya, which, when translated, can mean a collection a compendium, a section or a group. Originally, the word referred to a group of students who followed the same master. However, later it came to mean a philosophical school or dharma lineage.
If we look at the original meaning, in Pāli there are the five Nikāyas; in Sanskrit this would be the five Āgamas. One is called the Dīgha Nikāya, translated as the Long Discourses, another is the Majjhima Nikāya, which translates as the Middle-length Discourses. So, at this point, the word nikāya refers to a section of the Buddhist scriptures, organized by length or content. Similarly, for the Sthaviravāda, when the word nikāya is added to the name of a school, it was originally understood only as the gathering of those who held the lineage of a certain venerable master. It was primarily about the lineage of vows, not about doctrine.
However, later, the Sanskrit word ācāryavāda appeared. Ācārya means a “master” or a “teacher”, and vāda means “positions, tenets or assertions”. For example, Theravāda means the “doctrine of the elders” or “school of the elders”.
In the Dīpavaṃsa and Mahāvaṃsa, the term ācāryavāda is used in a deprecatory way to refer to schools that had discarded the true Dharma taught by the Teacher, the Buddha, and had chosen to follow a different master instead. They disregarded the words of the Buddha in favour of the views of a particular master.
Later historians then used the word ācāryavāda to refer to the sub-schools that broke away from the sangha community of original Buddhism.
Whereas the word nikāya originally referred to the school or group of a particular master, without any clear doctrinal reference, later students began to hold the tenets or the positions held by that master, and so the word nikāya began to change its meaning and took on its modern understanding as being different philosophical schools or different tenets.
There are many disagreements between the Southern transmission and Northern transmission explanations regarding the development of the Buddhist sub-schools.
The Northern Transmission Account
The main source for this account is Vasumitra’s Wheel Distinguishing the Differences Between the Scriptural Traditions [Skt. Samayabhedoparacanacakra], and the Gyalwang Karmapa chose to use this text as the basis for the discussion of the Northern tradition’s view of the development of sub-schools.
Of the two original schools, it was the Mahāsāṃghika that first began to divide into further factions. In the period between 100 and 200 years after the Buddha’s parinirvāṇa, the school split four times.
The First Split into Sub-Schools
According to Xuanzang’s translation, three schools split off from the Mahāsāṃghika just under 200 years after the Buddha’s parinirvāṇa: the Ekavyāvahārika, Lokottaravāda and Kaukkuṭika schools. The Tibetan translation differs in chronology; it says the split happened just 100 years after the parinirvāṇa.
The Ekavyāvahārika (Single Designation) school: so called because it asserts that all worldly and supramundane phenomena are imaginary and do not truly exist. They are all just the same designation.
The Lokottaravāda (Proponents of the Transcendent) school: so called because it asserts that all worldly phenomena are confusion. Only supramundane phenomena are true—the truth of the path and nirvāṇa i.e.the truth of cessation.
The Kaukkuṭika school: so called because the founder of this school came from the Kaukkuta clan.
The Second Split
The next split also came during the second century after the parinirvāṇa, according to Xuanzang’s translation, whereas the Tibetan translation places it in the first hundred years after the parinirvāṇa.
The Bahuśrutīya (Well-learned) school: so called because they engaged in a profound analysis of dharmas and studied many different sutras and scriptures.
The Third Split
Around two hundred years after the parinirvāṇa, according to Xuanzang’s translation, one hundred years in the Tibetan, the next split came.
The Prajñaptivāda (Designation School): so called because they assert that all phenomena such as pleasure and pain are interdependent, and phenomena such as the twelve sense bases are all imaginary designations.
The Fourth Split
According to The Wheel Distinguishing the Differences Between the Scriptural Traditions, approximately two hundred years after the Buddha’s parinirvāṇa a wanderer named Mahādeva became a monk and lived at Caitya mountain in Andhra, where he asserted and propagated the five traditions of the Mahāsāṃghika. This term “five traditions” refers to the five points of Mahādeva. Because they accepted the five points, three groups in Andhra seceded from the Mahāsāṃghika to form the following schools: Caityaśaila (Caitika, Stupa Mountain), Aparaśaila (Western Mountain), and Uttaraśaila (Northern Mountain). These three schools are named after the geographical areas where they were based in the southern India region of Andhra (now known as Andhra Pradesh).
The Gyalwang Karmapa summed up: if you include it as the original school, the division of the Mahāsāṃghika produced nine different schools in total: the Mahāsāṃghika, the Ekavyāvahārika, the Lokottaravāda, the Kaukkuṭika, the Bahuśrutīya, the Prajñaptivāda, the Caityaśaila /Caitika, the Aparaśaila, and the Uttaraśaila.
He then clarified an aspect of the Tibetan translation. There are four splits into sub-schools, but if you also include the original split of the Buddhist sangha into the Mahāsāṃghika and the Sthaviravāda, then the total becomes five splits.
