I. EMERGENCE OF MAHAYANA BUDDHISM

The evolution of the Aryans nomadic ways to urbans ways of life gave birth to a new elite class of merchants, artists, guides and bureaucrats. To this materially progressive group residing in the town and cities, Vedic religion as instituted by the Brahmins was of a rather mechanical and lifeless character. It involved the performance of rituals and repugnant bloody sacrifices that were cumbersome to the busy city dweller. The prosperous urbanites, who had worked their way up the social ladder, also resented the fact that the professional priest, apart from having abrogated all religious merit and powers to himself, was reluctant to give up the place he had appropriated at the top of the gradually stratifying caste system.

This conflict between established orthodoxy and the aspirations of newly rising groups in the Urban centres led to the growth of religious and philosophical speculations that con- fronted the instituationalised hegemony of the Brahmins. Some groups of non-Brahmin ascetics, having acquired psychic powers through severe penance, challenged the Brahmin claim of attributing magical religious powers only to the ritual of sacrifices conducted by him.

It was in such an atmosphere of speculation, inquiry and defiance at the established order that Prince Sidiirtha Gautama of the Semi-royal Sakya tribe, renounced the pleasures and in sharp contrast with the sufferings and miseries of life outside the luxurious confines of his palace. Clad in hermit's robe he set out in search of a new path of peace and happiness. For several years Gautama studied the teachings of the Upanijadr, the techniques of meditation and even practised rigorous self-mortification.

However, none of these showed him the way to the liberation of life from sorrow and suffering. Ultimately, after 49 days of continuous preserving meditation, in about 528 B.C., when he was 35 years old, he found enlightenment

As Gautama, the Buddha, he set the wheel of law rolling in his first sermon given at the Deer Park in Saransha. To the five disciples who heard this sermon, he preached that suffering is caused by human desire, emancipation is possible only through the Eight-fold path of right views, resolve, speech, conduct, livelihood, effort, recollection and meditation. The sermon was simple and rational, not involved with complex metaphysical thinking, nor alluding to any abstract concept of God of requiring complicated rituals of workship.

This became Buddha's middle path to Nirvana, or freedom from the eternal wheel of Birth and rebirth. To a nation weary of the endless mechinations of the Brahmans, Buddha's message was a welcome soothing balm. The "middle path" over the decades was to be adopted by millions of followers at the new religion of Buddhism, the world over.

The new current introduced by Buddha within the Indian culture ultimately come to be an essential part of world culture as whole. The moral spiritual thoughts preached by Buddha carried forward a certain ancient religious and cultural tradition and became the permanent source of a manifold development which expressed itself not only by setting up a high and refined moral ideal promoting charitable activities among the laity, and ascetic renunciation and mystical contemplation especially among the monks and nuns, but also by the creation of truly remarkable educational, literary, artisti: and intellectual activities

The theological phase of Buddhism begins after the passing away of its founder long before the reign of Aloka. After the death of the Master there arose great controversies among the followers regarding the interpretation of the utterances of the Teacher and also about the rules of discipline. For the settlement of these disputes great Synods (Samgitis) were held from time to time. There were men like Purdea who held it better to abide by what they had heard from the Teacher rather than to accept the conclusions arrived at in the First Council. Therefore, with the gradual spread of Buddhism in Northern India, geographical and local influences also seem to have contributed towards the growth of controversies in things doctrinal and disciplinary."

Though the seed of dissensions in the Buddhist church were already sown by Devadatta, the Chabbagglyas and the Kolambikas during the life time of the Master himself, is only a century after the Buddha's Parinirvind that we hear of a schism in the Buddhist church. The dissenters convoked another great assembly (Mahasangha) and worked out a separate doctrinal section with its 'unorthodox canon. This new party of the democrats within the monasteries came to be known as the Mahasanghikas and the upholders of orthodox views were known as the Theravadins.

Thus, this Second Council was marked with a split in the solidarity of the Sangha and the evolution of new schools leading to the formation of different sub-sects out of those two primitive schools. We hear of as many as eleven sub-sects arising out of the Sthaviravada and five out of the Mahasanghikas, so that already in the time of Asoka there were eighteen schools. According to the Sinhalese historians Aloka convened the Third Council at Pajaliputra in order to reorganise the Samgha and put an end to heretical growth. Another Buddhist canonical text, Kathāvathu, supposed to have been complied during this time by Tisso, discusses and criticises the tenets of these various sects

Buddhism, during the reign period of Aśoka, seems to have undergone significant changes and emerged as an distinct religion with great potentialities for growth and expansion, imperial and merchantile patronage had a permanent influence on the Sangha, which began to grow as an institution of faith and culture. The laity also came to play an important part in life of the doctrine and its development.