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Updated: June 17, 2025
The Vinaya recounts how after entertaining the Buddha and his disciples she asked eight boons which proved to be the privileges of supplying various classes of monks with food, clothing and medicine and of providing the nuns with bathing dresses, for, said she, it shocked her sense of propriety to see them bathing naked.
In the Tripitaka, that is, the three book-baskets or boxes, we have the term for canon of scripture, in the complete collection of which are sutra, vinaya and abidharma. We shall see, also, that while Gautama shut out the gods, his speculative followers who claimed to be his successors, opened the doors and allowed them to troop in again.
Its reality as a corporate body was secured by stringent regulations that under no excuse must the Bhikkhus resident in a parish omit to assemble on Uposatha days . The Vinaya represents the initiative for these simple observances as coming not from the Buddha but from King Bimbisâra, who pointed out that the adherents of other schools met on fixed days and that it would be well if his disciples did the same.
He says that it put an end to the dissensions which had been distracting the Buddhist Church for nearly a century and that it recognized all the eighteen sects as holding the true doctrine: that it put the Vinaya in writing as well as such parts of the Sûtra-piṭaka and Abhidharma as were still unwritten and corrected those which already existed as written texts: that all kinds of Mahayanist writings appeared at this time but that the Śrâvakas raised no opposition.
It is perhaps by some error of arrangement that after committing such unpardonable crimes Devadatta is represented as still a member of the order and endeavouring to provoke a schism by asking for stricter rules. The attempt failed and according to later legends he died on the spot, but the Vinaya merely says that hot blood gushed from his mouth.
The personal possessions allowed to a monk were only the three robes, a girdle, an alms bowl, a razor, a needle and a water strainer . Everything else which might be given to an individual had to be handed over to the confraternity and held in common and the Vinaya shows clearly how a band of wandering monks following their teacher from place to place speedily grew into an influential corporation possessing parks and monasteries near the principal cities.
Its ideas and precepts are Hinayanist: the Arhat is held up as the ideal and in a remarkable passage where the degrees of sanctity are graded and compared no mention is made of Bodhisattvas. This first translation was followed by a long series of others, principally from the Sûtra-Piṭaka, for very little of the Vinaya was translated before the fifth century.
This meeting recited or compiled a new version of the Dhamma and Vinaya . It is not easy to establish any facts about the origin and tenets of this Mahâsangîtika or Mahâsanghika sect, though it seems to have been important.
Two instances will perhaps illustrate this better than a general discussion. As already mentioned, the Vinaya of the Mûlasarvâstivâdins makes the Buddha visit north-western India and Kashmir, whereas the Pali texts do not represent him as travelling further west than the country of the Kurus.
Some narrative passages, such as the Sutta which relates the close of the Buddha's life and the portion of the Vinaya which tells how he obtained enlightenment and made his first converts, are of considerable length.
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