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The text of the Pâtimokkha is in the Vinaya combined with a very ancient commentary called the Sutta-vibhanga. The Vinaya also contains two treatises known collectively as the Khandakas but more frequently cited by their separate names as Mahâvagga and Cullavagga.
The texts quoted above leave the Buddha occupied in teaching the five monks in the Deer Park and the Mahâvagga gives us the text of the sermon with which he opened his instruction. It is entitled Turning the Wheel of Righteousness, and is also known as The Sermon at Benares.
Upâli, who comes first, is called chief of the Vinaya but, so far as there was one head of the order, it seems to have been Kassapa. He is the Brahman ascetic of Uruvelâ whose conversion is recorded in the first book of the Mahâvagga and is said to have exchanged robes with the Buddha . He observed the Dhutângas and we may conjecture that his influence tended to promote asceticism.
Hitherto we have found allusions to the events of the Buddha's life rather than consecutive statements and narratives but for the next period, comprising his struggle for enlightenment, its attainment and the commencement of his career as a teacher, we have several accounts, both discourses put into his own mouth and narratives in the third person like the beginning of the Mahâvagga.
The admission of these hermits to the order is probably historical and explains the presence among the Buddha's disciples of a tendency towards self-mortification of which he himself did not wholly approve. The Mahâvagga contains a series of short legends about these occurrences, one of them in two versions.
The Patimokha or order of discipline, and the beginning of the Mahavagga, containing an account of the opening of the ministry of the founder. Vol. xvii. Vinaya Texts ii. Mahavagga continued. Kullavagga or discipline as established by the Master. Vol. xx. Kullavagga continued. Vols. xxii., xlv. contain Suttas of the religion of the Jainas. Vols. xxxv., xxxvi. Was there a Personal Founder?
It is stated that the Buddha knew it before attaining enlightenment , but it is second in importance only to the four truths, and in the opening sections of the Mahâvagga, he is represented as meditating on it under the Bo-tree, both in its positive and negative form. This is the origin of this whole mass of suffering.
Davids and Oldenberg, in translating this legend from the "Mahavagga," say in a note, "A well-known incident in the life of Buddha has evidently been shaped after the model of this story;" and they declare that "nowhere in the 'Pali Pitakas' is this scene of Buddha's leave-taking mentioned."
The Mahâvagga states that after attaining Buddhahood he sat crosslegged at the foot of the tree for seven days uninterruptedly, enjoying the bliss of emancipation, and while there thought out the chain of causation which is only alluded to in the suttas quoted above. He also sat under three other trees, seven days under each.
It is possible, as Oldenburg suggests, that we have here two popular couplets which were really bandied between the friends and enemies of the Buddha. It now becomes difficult to give dates but the Mahâvagga relates that the Buddha stopped some time at Râjagaha and then revisited his native town, Kapilavatthu.
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