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Updated: May 1, 2025
The first was a youth named Yasa who joined the order, while his father, mother and former wife became lay believers. Then came first four and subsequently fifty friends of Yasa and joined the order. "At that time" says the Mahâvagga. "there were sixty-one Arhats in the world," so that at first arhatship seems to have followed immediately on ordination.
On reaching their destination they were placed under the superintendence of competent instructors, who were commissioned to initiate them into the canon of Buddhist scriptures, comprising, to mention only a few of the principal, the Lalitavistara, the Dhammapada, the Kuddhapatha, the Palinokkha, the Uragavagga, the Kulavagga, the Mahavagga, the Atthakavagga, and the Upasampadakammavaca.
The Mahâvagga contains a portion of an ancient word-for-word explanation of this code and most of the Sutta-vibhanga is an amplification and exposition of it. The Pâtimokkha was already in existence when these books were composed, for we hear that if in a company of Bhikkhus no one knows the Pâtimokkha, one of the younger brethren should be sent to some better instructed monastery to learn it.
The Mahâvagga proceeds to relate that many of the young nobility joined the order and that the people began to murmur saying "The Monk Gotama causes fathers to beget no sons and families to become extinct." And again "The Great Monk has come to Giribbaja of the Magadha people, leading with him all the followers of Sâñjaya. Whom will he lead off next?"
The first is the Vinaya Pitaka, dealing with discipline, but including the Mahavagga, a history of the first beginnings of the order as the founder gathered it around him. The second is the Sutta Pitaka or collection of teachings.
Other versions of the enlightenment give other incidents which are not rendered less credible by their omission from the narrative quoted, for it is clearly an epitome put together for a special didactic purpose. But still the story as related at the beginning of the Mahâvagga of the Vinaya has a stronger smack of mythology than the passages quoted from the Sutta-Pitaka.
I looked at the four Devas whose heads almost touched the roof, and thought of the story of their apparition told in the Mahavagga. On a beautiful night the Four Great Kings entered the holy grove, filling all the place with light; and having respectfully saluted the Blessed One, they stood in the four directions, like four great firebrands.
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