Early Buddhist History on Buddhist Resources

The Buddhist Councils

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 23:52:18 +0200

A council, in Buddhist usage, is a sangiti — literally a “chanting together.” The word is exact and worth holding onto. These were not deliberative bodies issuing doctrinal rulings in the manner of Nicaea. They were assemblies at which the memorised teaching was recited collectively in order to establish and certify an agreed version.

Emperor Ashoka and Buddhism

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 23:53:27 +0200

Ashoka Maurya ruled most of the Indian subcontinent from roughly 268 to 232 BCE. He is the earliest figure in Buddhist history whose existence, dates, and words are independently attested, and the earliest Indian ruler of any kind about whom this is true. His inscriptions — carved on polished sandstone pillars and on rock faces from Afghanistan to Karnataka — are the first decipherable writing from India after the still-unread Indus script.

The Early Buddhist Schools

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 23:54:40 +0200

Between roughly the fourth century BCE and the first century CE, the single Buddhist community divided into a set of schools that the tradition conventionally numbers at eighteen. Only one of them, the Theravada, survives today as an independent ordination lineage. The others are known from their surviving texts, from the polemics of their rivals, from Chinese translations, and from inscriptions.

The Decline of Buddhism in India

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 23:55:46 +0200

By about 1300 CE, Buddhism had effectively ceased to exist in the Indian subcontinent outside the Himalayan fringe. The tradition that had produced Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu, Dharmakirti, and Shantideva, that had been endowed by emperors and had staffed monastic universities of thousands, was gone from the plains where it had begun.