2.3. The Third Buddhist Council

The Third Buddhist Council was held at Pataliputra, about 236 years after the Parinibbāna of the Buddha, presided over by the Venerable Tissa Moggaliputta and attended by a thousand of Arahants. According to the Mahāvaṃsa, the council was organized in the seventeenth year of the great Emperor Asoka and under his patronage. The occasion for the third Council was supplied by the need to establish the purity of the canon which had been imperiled by the rise of different sects and their rival claims, teachings and practices. Tissa Moggaliputta, who is reputed to have converted the Emperor to the Buddhist faith, was pained to observe the corrupt practices that had crept into the Brotherhood and the heretical doctrines preached by sectarians of various descriptions. He succeeded in subduing the heresies and expelling the sectarians from the Church. The most significant outcome of the Council was that he restored the true faith and propounded the Abhidamma treatise, the Kathavatthu, during the session of the Council.

With the conversion of Asoka, the material prosperity of the monasteries grew tremendously with the result that a lot of heretics who had lost their income and honour entered the Buddhist Saṅgha to live ease and comfort, but they continued to adhere to their old faiths and practices and they preached their doctrine as the doctrine of Lord Buddha. The number of false monks and heretics because for larger than that of true bhikkhus. As a result, for seven years no Uposatha or Pavarana ceremony was held in any of the monasteries. Moreover, the community of true bhikkhus refused to observe these ceremonies with the false monks and heretics. The Emperor was filled with distress at this failure of the Brotherhood and sent commands for the observance of the Uposatha, with the hope that the Sangha would be purity again. Because of misunderstanding his commands, the minister, who was entrusted with this task, beheaded several monks for their refusal to carry out the king’s order. When this sad news was reported to Asoka he was seized with grief and apologized for this misdeed. He also asked the Brotherhood whether they held him responsible. Some thought him guilty, some not. No monk could solve his trouble.

The venerable monk was lodged in the pleasure garden and shown exceeding reverence and courtesy. He was then asked to perform a miracle, which request he instantly complied with. This confirmed the King in his faith. The Ven. Monk instructed the King in the holy religion of the Buddha for a week. The King thereafter convoked an assembly of the whole community of bhikkhus. He called the bhikkhus of several persuasions to his presence and asked them to expound the teachings to the Blessed One. They set forth their misguided beliefs, such as the doctrine of the eternal soul, and soon.

These heretical monks numbering sixty thousands were expelled from the Brotherhood by the King. He thereafter interrogated the true believers about the doctrine taught by the Buddha and they answered that it was Vibhajjavada (the religion of analytical reasoning). When the Thera Moggaliputta Tissa corroborated the truth of this answer, the King made the request that the Brotherhood should hold the Uposattha ceremony so that the whole community might be purified of evil elements. The Thera was made the guardian of the Order.

With the help of King Asoka, Thera Tissa elected a thousand bhikkhus of the Brotherhood who were well-versed in the three Pitakas to make a compilation of the true doctrine. For nine months he worked with the other monks the final version of the Pāli Canon, the Abhidhamma, was compiled. Several new books of the fifth Nikāya, Khuddhaka Nikāya, were also added to, and the compilation of the true Tripitaka was seen to be completed. This council was held in the same manner and with the same zeal as those of Mahakassapa and Thera Yasa respectively. In the midst of the council Thera Tissa set forth the Kathavatthupakarana wherein the heretical doctrines were thoroughly examined and refuted.

The other important result of the council was the dispatch of missionaries to the different countries of the world for the propagation of the Saddhamma. Mahinda, the son of Asoka, and Sanghamitta, his daughter, were charged with missionary work in the island of Ceylon and they have already mentioned the singular success of this mission in that island. From the edicts of Asoka we know of the various Buddhist missions he sent to far off countries in Asia, Africa and Europe. It is to a large extent due to these missionary activities that Buddhism, indeed, became the ruling religion of a large part of mankind.

About the year 110 BC, during the reign of the King Vatta Gamani Abhaya, a Council of Arahantas was held at Āluvihāra in Shri Lanka. On that occasion, the Tipiṭaka, representing the entire body of the Buddha’s teaching and now acknowledged as the oldest reliable record of the Buddha’s words, was put down in writing in the ancient Pāli language for the first time in the history of Buddhism. Thus, owing to the untiring efforts of Arahants and noble ones, the voluminous Tipiṭaka happens to comprise the essence of the Buddha’s teaching established and conserved in the Pāli canon handing down through the generations.