________________ 438 Homage to Vais alt arrival in the city, Buddha stayed in the mango grove of a famous courtesan named Amrapali, teaching and exhorting his disciples, and then moved to her house, refusing the subsequent invitation of some grandees of the town. At Vaisali he spent his last days, expounding the law to Ananda and exhorting his disciples, and then, having foretold his death, passed on to Kusinara. Though the Lichchhavis had been defeated by Ajatasatru, the powerful Vrijjian confederacy does not appear to have been broken up; and Vaisali continued to be the centre of political as well as of religious lif north of the Ganges. It contained a stupa erected by the Lichchhavis over some of the relics of Buddha's body, and another enshrining some of the remains of his great disciple, Ananda; it was crowded with Buddhist monasteries; and, according to the account left by Hiuen Tsiang some centuries later, both within and without the city and all round it the sacred places were so numerous that it would be difficult to recount them all. It was here that the second great Council of the Buddhist Church was held. a Council necessitated by the laxity of the Vrijjian monks, who asserted the legality of certain relaxations of the rule of discipline. The Buddhist community became split up into two contending parties--the strict and the lax, and a Council became necessary for the restoration of order. The points in dispute were discussed at this Council, which is said to have consisted of 700 monks; but the local monks failed to convince the assembled brotherhood, and all the relaxations claimed by them were finally prohibited. This second Council,* it has been [16] said, stands in a relation to Buddhism very similar to that which the Council of Nicaea bears to Christianity. Visits of Chinese Pilgrims For several centuries after this we have little record of the history of the district. It continued to form part of the territory of the Lichchhavis, who acknowledged the suzerainty of the Mauryan empire; and Vaisali, lying as it did on the royal road from Pataliputra to Nepal, was visited by Asoka, who enriched it by a stupa and lion pillar, though on the other band he is said to have robbed it of part of the sacred relics of Buddha. We know nothing however of its history during the next few centuries, with the exception of a traditional+ raid by Kanishka, the Kushan King * Buddhism by Monier Williams. Professor Oldenberg, places the date of the Council at 380 B. C.; but the accounts which profess to give its date and the details of its proceedings are very contradictory. See Manual of Indian Buddhism by Kern, pp. 103-109. + See Reports Arob. Surv. India, Vol.-XVI, PP. 8-11. .
