the internal changes which are inevitable when a creed expands far
beyond the boundaries within which it was a natural expression of local
thought. An intellectual movement and growth is visible within the
limits of the Pali Canon and is confirmed by what we hear of the
existence of sects or schools, but it does not appear that in the time
of Asoka the workings of speculation had led to any point of view
materially different from that of Gotama.

Our knowledge of general Indian history before the reign of Asoka is
scanty and the data which can be regarded as facts for Buddhist
ecclesiastical history are scantier still. We hear of two (or including
the Mahasangiti three) meetings sometimes called Councils; scriptures,
obviously containing various strata, were compiled, and eighteen sects
or schools had time to arise and some of them to decay. Much doubt has
been cast upon the councils[551] but to my mind this suspicion is
unmerited, provided that too ecclesiastical a meaning is not given to
the word. We must not suppose that the meetings held at Rajagaha and
Vesali were similar to the Council of Nicaea or that they produced the
works edited by the Pali Text Society. Such terms as canon, dogma and
council, though indispensable, are misleading at this period. We want
less formal equivalents for the same ideas. A number of men who were
strangers to those conceptions of a hierarchy and a Bible[552] which are
so familiar to us met together to fix and record the opinions and
injunctions of the Master or to remove misapprehensions and abuses. It
would be better if we could avoid using even the word Buddhist at this
period, for it implies a difference sharper than the divisions existing
between the followers of Gotama and others. They were in the position of
the followers of Christ before they received at Antioch the name of
Christians and the meeting at Rajagaha was analogous to the conferences
recorded in the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles.

The record of this meeting and of the subsequent meeting at Vesali is
contained in Chapters XI. and XII. of the Cullavagga, which must
therefore be later than the second meeting and perhaps considerably
later. Other accounts are found in the Dipavamsa, Maha-Bodhi-Vamsa and
Buddhaghosa's commentaries. The version given in the Cullavagga is
abrupt and does not entirely agree with other narratives of what
followed on the death of the Buddha[553]. It seems to be a combination
of tw