centuries of our era, represent it as arising in connection with the first council, which was either that of Rajagaha or some earlier meeting supposed to have been held during the Buddha’s lifetime, and Hsuean Chuang[561] intimates that it was formed of laymen as well as monks and that it accepted additional matter including dharanis or spells rejected by the monkish council.  Its name (admitted by its opponents) seems to imply that it represented at one time the opinions of the majority or at least a great number of the faithful.  But it was not the sect which flourished in Ceylon and the writer of the Dipavamsa is prejudiced against it.  It may be a result of this animus that he connects it with the discreditable Vajjian schism and the Chinese tradition may be more correct.  On the other hand the adherents of the school would naturally be disposed to assign it an early origin.  Fa Hsien says[562] that the Vinaya of the Mahasanghikas was considered “the most complete with the fullest explanations.”  A translation of this text is contained in the Chinese Tripitaka[563].

Early Indian Buddhism is said to have been divided into eighteen sects or schools, which have long ceased to exist and must not be confounded with any existing denominations.  Fa Hsien observes that they agree in essentials and differ only in details and this seems to have been true not only when he wrote (about 420 A.D.) but throughout their history.  In different epochs and countries Buddhism presents a series of surprising metamorphoses, but the divergences between the sects existing in India at any given time are less profound in character and less violent in expression than the divisions of Christianity.  Similarly the so-called sects[564] in modern China, Burma and Siam are better described as schools, in some ways analogous to such parties as the High and Low Church in England.  On the other hand some of the eighteen schools exceeded the variations permitted in Christianity and Islam by having different collections of the scriptures.  But at the time of which we are treating these collections had not been reduced to writing:  they were of considerable extent compared with the Bible or Koran and they admitted later explanatory matter.  The record of the Buddha’s words did not profess to be a miraculous revelation but merely a recollection of what had been said.  It is therefore natural that each school should maintain that the memory of its own scholars had transmitted the most accurate and complete account and that tradition should represent the successive councils as chiefly occupied in reciting and sifting these accounts.