probable that the list merely contains the names of prominent Theras who exercised little authority in virtue of any office, though their personal qualities assured them respect.  Upali, 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 Uruvela whose conversion is recorded in the first book of the Mahavagga and is said to have exchanged robes with the Buddha[557].  He observed the Dhutangas and we may conjecture that his influence tended to promote asceticism.  Dasaka and Sonaka are also designated as chiefs of the Vinaya and there was perhaps a distinction between those who studied (to use modern phrases) ecclesiastical law and dogmatic theology.

The accounts[558] of the second Council are as abrupt as those of the first and do not connect it with previous events.  The circumstances said to have led to its meeting are, however, probable.  According to the Cullavagga, a hundred years after the death of the Buddha certain Bhikkhus of Vajjian lineage resident at Vesali upheld ten theses involving relaxations of the older discipline.  The most important of these was that monks were permitted to receive gold and silver, but all of them, trivial as they may seem, had a dangerous bearing for they encouraged not only luxury but the formation of independent schools.  For instance they allowed pupils to cite the practice of their preceptors as a justification for their conduct and authorized monks resident in one parish to hold Uposatha in separate companies and not as one united body.  The story of the condemnation of these new doctrines contains miraculous incidents but seems to have a historical basis.  It relates how a monk called Yasa, when a guest of the monks of Vesali, quarrelled with them because they accepted money from the laity and, departing thence, sought for support among the Theras or elders of the south and west.  The result was a conference at Vesali in which the principal figures are Revata and Sabbakami, a pupil of Ananda, expressly said to have been ordained one hundred and twenty years earlier[559].  The ten theses were referred to a committee, which rejected them all, and this rejection was confirmed by the whole Sangha, who proceeded to rehearse the Vinaya.  We are not however told that they revised the Sutta or Abhidhamma.

Here ends the account of the Cullavagga but the Dipavamsa adds that the wicked Vajjian monks, to whom it ascribes wrong doctrines as well as errors in discipline, collected a strong faction and held a schismatic council called the Mahasangiti.  This meeting recited or compiled a new version of the Dhamma and Vinaya[560].  It is not easy to establish any facts about the origin and tenets of this Mahasangitika or Mahasanghika sect, though it seems to have been important.  The Chinese pilgrims Fa Hsien and Hsuean Chuang, writing on the basis of information obtained in the fifth and seventh