After a time, certain relaxations of these rules or unauthorized departures from them (ten in number, such as reception of money-gifts, eating a second meal in the afternoon, drinking stimulating beverages, if pure as water in appearance[24]), began to be common. The question as to whether liberty should be allowed in these points, _especially in the first_, shook the very foundations of the community. In fact the whole society became split up into two contending parties, the strict and the lax, and a second Council became necessary for the restoration of order. All ten points were discussed at this Council, said to have consisted of 700 monks and held at Vaiṡālī (Vesālī, now Besārh), 27 miles north of Patnā, about 380 B.C.[25] The discussions were protracted for eight months, and all the ten unlawful relaxations were finally prohibited. It has been observed that this second Council stands in a relation to Buddhism very similar to that which the Council of Nicæa bears to Christianity. The exact date, however, of either the first or second assemblies cannot be determined with precision. Not long afterwards occurred the political revolution caused by the well-known Ćandra-gupta (= Sandra-kottus)—sometimes called the first Aṡoka (or disparagingly, Kālāṡoka). This man, who was a low-born Ṡūdra, usurped the throne and founded the Maurya dynasty, after killing king Nanda and taking possession of Pāṭaliputra (or Palibothra, now Patnā, the then metropolis of Magadha or Behār), about 315 B.C. He extended the kingdom of Magadha over all Hindūstān, and became so powerful that when Alexander’s successor, Seleukos Nikator (whose reign commenced about 312 B.C.), invaded India from his kingdom of Bactria, so effectual was the resistance offered by Ćandra-gupta, that the Greek thought it politic to form an alliance with the Hindū king, and sent his own countryman, Megasthenes, as an ambassador to reside at his court. To this circumstance we owe the earliest authentic account of Indian customs and usages, by an intelligent observer who was not a native; and Megasthenes’ narrative, preserved by Strabo, furnishes a basis on which a fair inference may be founded that Brāhmanism and Buddhism existed side by side in India on amicable terms in the fourth and third centuries B.C. There is even ground for believing that king Ćandra-gupta himself favoured the Buddhists, though outwardly he never renounced his faith in Brāhmanism. Ćandra-gupta’s reign is thought to have lasted until 291 B.C., and that of his son and successor, Vindusāra, from 291 to (say) about 260 B.C. Then came Ćandra-gupta’s grandson, the celebrated Aṡoka (sometimes called Dharmāṡoka), who, though of Ṡūdra origin, was perhaps the greatest Hindū monarch of India.