iri as
the principal religious centre and says it had 5000 monks as against
3000 in the Mahavihara, but though he dwells on the gorgeous
ceremonial, the veneration of the sacred tooth, the representations of
Gotama's previous lives, and the images of Maitreya, he does not
allude to the worship of Avalokita and Manjusri or to anything that
can be called definitely Mahayanist. He describes a florid and
somewhat superstitious worship which may have tended to regard the
Buddha as superhuman, but the relics of Gotama's body were its chief
visible symbols and we have no ground for assuming that such teaching
as is found in the Lotus sutra was its theological basis. Yet we may
legitimately suspect that the traditions of the Abhayagiri remount to
early prototypes of that teaching.

In the second and third centuries the Court seems to have favoured the
Mahavihara and King Gothabhaya banished monks belonging to the
Vetulya sect,[48] but in spite of this a monk of the Abhayagiri named
Sanghamitta obtained his confidence and that of his son, Mahasena, who
occupied the throne from 275 to 302 A.D. The Mahavihara was destroyed
and its occupants persecuted at Sanghamitta's instigation but he was
murdered and after his death the great Monastery was rebuilt. The
triumph however was not complete for Mahasena built a new monastery
called Jetavana on ground belonging to the Mahavihara and asked the
monks to abandon this portion of their territory. They refused and
according to the Mahavamsa ultimately succeeded in proving their
rights before a court of law. But the Jetavana remained as the
headquarters of a sect known as Sagaliyas. They appear to have been
moderately orthodox, but to have had their own text of the Vinaya for
according to the Commentary[49] on the Mahavamsa they "separated the
two Vibhangas of the Bhagava[50] from the Vinaya ... altering their
meaning and misquoting their contents." In the opinion of the
Mahavihara both the Abhayagiri and Jetavana were schismatical, but the
laity appear to have given their respect and offerings to all three
impartially and the Mahavamsa several times records how the same
individual honoured the three Confraternities.

With the death of Mahasena ends the first and oldest part of the
Mahavamsa, and also in native opinion the grand period of Sinhalese
history, the subsequent kings being known as the Culavamsa or minor
dynasty. A continuation[51] of the chronicle takes up the story and
tells