ABSTRACT
The history of Buddhism in India between the death of the founder and the beginning of the period is remarkably little known. Apart from the account of the first two communal recitations or Councils and a certain amount of information relating to the reign of the Emperor Aśoka, we are largely dependent upon traditional Buddhist accounts of the origin of the eighteen schools. As Frauwallner has commented: “These accounts are late, uncertain and contradictory, and cannot be relied upon blindly”.1 The number eighteen is probably symbolic in nature and should perhaps not be taken too seriously. Nevertheless it is clear that there is a generally accepted tradition that in the course of the second and third centuries after the Buddha’s mahāparinibbāna the divided into a number of teacher’s lineages (ācariyakula)2 or doctrines (vāda;3 ācariyavāda4) or fraternities (nikāya).5 At a later date these terms became in effect synonymous, but this may well not have been the case earlier.
