Sthaviravāda (Sthavira nikāya)

Sthaviravāda (Sthavira nikāya) is recorded within Buddhism and is no longer extant. Also written Sthaviranikāya, the Elders, Theras.

Origin

No founding year is given below, because the sources read do not agree on one and a date has not been chosen for them. No founding date can be given. The school is defined negatively, as the group that did not become the Mahāsāṃghika at the first schism. Cox records three competing accounts of that schism and states that 'the actual circumstances for the first schism remain obscure': (a) at the council of Vaiśālī, roughly 100 years after the Buddha's death, over ten points of monastic discipline — sources do not agree that a schism actually resulted; (b) at a council at Pāṭaliputra in the mid-3rd century BCE, over five points characterising the arhat, with the Mahāsāṃghikas the majority and the Sthaviras the minority; (c) at a council under Aśoka in the 3rd century BCE, recorded in Pāli sources only, directed by Moggaliputta Tissa, at which 60,000 monks were expelled.