They seem to refer to one assembly regarded
(at least in Tibet) as the third council of the Church and held under
Kanishka four or five hundred years[198] after the Buddha's death. As
to what happened at the council tradition seems to justify the
following deductions, though as the tradition is certainly jumbled it
may also be incorrect in details.

(_a_) The council is recognized only by the northern Church and is
unknown to the Churches of Ceylon, Burma and Siam. It seems to have
regarded Kashmir as sacred land outside which the true doctrine was
exposed to danger. (_b_) But it was not a specially Mahayanist meeting
but rather a conference of peace and compromise. Taranatha says this
clearly: in Hsuean Chuang's account an assembly of Arhats (which at
this time must have meant Hinayanists) elect a president who was not
an Arhat and according to Paramartha the assembly consisted of 500
Arhats and 500 Bodhisattvas who were convened by a leader of the
Sarvastivadin school and ended by requesting Asvaghosha to revise
their work. (_c_) The literary result of the council was the
composition of commentaries on the three Pitakas. One of these, the
Abhidharma-mahavibhasha-sastra, translated into Chinese in 437-9 and
still extant, is said to be a work of encyclopaedic character, hardly a
commentary in the strict sense. Paramartha perhaps made a confusion in
saying that the Jnana-prasthana itself was composed at the council.
The traditions indicate that the council to some extent sifted and
revised the Tripitaka and perhaps it accepted the seven Abhidharma
books of the Sarvastivadins.[199] But it is not stated or implied that
it composed or sanctioned Mahayanist books. Taranatha merely says that
such books appeared at this time and that the Hinayanists raised no
active objection.

But if the above is the gist of the traditions, the position described
is not clear. The council is recognized by Mahayanists yet it appears
to have resulted in the composition of a Sarvastivadin treatise, and
the tradition connecting the Sarvastivadins with the council is not
likely to be wrong, for they are recognized in the inscription on
Kanishka's casket, and Gandhara and Kashmir were their headquarters.
The decisions of councils are often politic rather than logical and it
may be that the doctors summoned by Kanishka, while compiling
Sarvastivadin treatises, admitted the principle that there is more
than one vehicle which can take mankind to sa