class="fnanchor pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[41] which soon became the enemy of the Mahâvihâra and heterodox, if the latter is to be considered orthodox. The account of the schism given in the Mahâvaṃsa[42] is obscure, but the dispute resulted in the Piṭakas, which had hitherto been preserved orally, being committed to writing. The council which defined and edited the scriptures was not attended by all the monasteries of Ceylon, but only by the monks of the Mahâvihâra, and the text which they wrote down was their special version and not universally accepted. It included the Parivâra, which was apparently a recent manual composed in Ceylon. The Mahâvaṃsa says no more about this schism, but the Nikâya-Sangrahawa[43] says that the monks of the Abhayagiri monastery now embraced the doctrines of the Vajjiputta school (one of the seventeen branches of the Mahâsanghikas) which was known in Ceylon as the Dhammaruci school from an eminent teacher of that name. Many pious kings followed who built or repaired sacred edifices and Buddhism evidently flourished, but we also hear of heresy. In the third century A.D.[44] King Voharaka Tissa suppressed[45] the Vetulyas. This sect was connected with the Abhayagiri monastery, but, though it lasted until the twelfth century, I have found no Sinhalese account of its tenets. It is represented as the worst of heresies, which was suppressed by all orthodox kings but again and again revived, or was reintroduced from India. Though it always found a footing at the Abhayagiri it was not officially recognized as the creed of that Monastery which since the time of Vaṭṭagâmaṇi seems to have professed the relatively orthodox doctrine called Dhammaruci.

Mention is made in the Kathâ-vatthu of heretics who held that the Buddha remained in the Tusita heaven and that the law was preached on earth not by him but by Ananda and the commentary[46] ascribes these views to the Vetulyakas. The reticence of the Sinhalese chronicles makes it doubtful whether the Vetulyakas of Ceylon and these heretics are identical but probably the monks of the Abhayagiri, if not strictly speaking Mahayanist, were an off-shoot of an ancient sect which contained some germs of the Mahayana. Hsüan Chuang in his narrative[47] states (probably from hearsay) that the monks of the Mahâvihâra were Hinayanists but that both vehicles were studied at the Abhayagiri. I-Ching on the contrary says expressly that all the Sinhalese belonged to the Âryasthavira Nikâya. Fa-Hsien describes the Buddhism of Ceylon as he saw it about 412 A.D., but does not apply to it the terms Hina or Mahayana. He evidently regarded the Abhayagiri as the principal religious centre and says it had 5000 monks as against 3000 in the Mahâvihâra, but though he dwells on the gorgeous ceremonial, the veneration of the sacred tooth, the representations of Gotama's previous lives, and the images of Maitreya, he does not allude to the worship of Avalokita and Mañjusrî or to anything that can be called definitely Mahayanist. He describes a florid and somewhat superstitious worship which may have tended to regard the Buddha as superhuman, but the relics of Gotama's body were its chief visible symbols and we have no ground for assuming that such teaching as is found in the Lotus sûtra was its theological basis. Yet we may legitimately suspect that the traditions of the Abhayagiri remount to early prototypes of that teaching.

In the second and third centuries the Court seems to have favoured the Mahâvihâra and King Goṭhâbhaya banished monks belonging to the Vetulya sect,[48] but in spite of this a monk of the Abhayagiri named Sanghamitta obtained his confidence and that of his son, Mahâsena, who occupied the throne from 275 to 302 A.D. The Mahâvihâra was destroyed and its occupants persecuted at Sanghamitta's instigation but he was murdered and after his death the great Monastery was rebuilt. The triumph however was not complete for Mahâsena built a new monastery called Jetavana on ground belonging to the Mahâvihâra and asked the monks to abandon this portion of their territory. They refused and according to the Mahâvamsa ultimately succeeded in proving their rights before a court of law. But the Jetavana remained as the headquarters of a sect known as Sagaliyas. They appear to have been moderately orthodox, but to have had their own text of the Vinaya for according to the Commentary[49] on the Mahâvamsa they "separated the two Vibhangas of the Bhagavâ[50] from the Vinaya ... altering their meaning and misquoting their contents." In the opinion of the Mahâvihâra both the Abhayagiri and Jetavana were schismatical, but the laity appear to have given their respect and offerings to all three impartially and the Mahâvamsa several times records how the same individual honoured the three Confraternities.

With the death of Mahâsena ends the first and oldest part of the Mahâvamsa, and also in native opinion the grand period of Sinhalese history, the subsequent kings being known as the Cûlavaṃsa or minor dynasty. A continuation[51] of the chronicle takes up the story and tells of the doings of Mahâsena's son Sirimeghavaṇṇa.[52] Judged by the standard of the Mahâvihâra, he was fairly satisfactory. He rebuilt the Lohapasâda and caused a golden image of Mahinda to be made and carried in procession. This veneration of the founder of a local church reminds one of the respect shown to the images of half-deified abbots in Tibet, China and Japan. But the king did not neglect the Abhayagiri or assign it a lower position than the Mahâvihâra for he gave it partial custody of the celebrated relic known as the Buddha's tooth which was brought to Ceylon from Kalinga in the ninth year of his reign and has ever since been considered the palladium of the island.