The second general council was called to correct certain abuses which had begun to creep in. It was held about a hundred years after the teacher's death. A great fraternity of monks proposed to relax the conventual discipline, by allowing greater liberty in taking food, in drinking intoxicating liquor, and taking gold and silver if offered in alms. The schismatic monks were degraded, to the number of ten thousand, but formed a new sect. The third council, held during the reign of the great Buddhist Emperor Asoka, was called on account of heretics, who, to the number of sixty thousand, were degraded and expelled. After this, missionaries were despatched to preach the word in different lands. The names and success of these missionaries are recorded in the _Mahawanso_, or Sacred History, translated by Mr. George Turnour from the Singhalese. But what is remarkable is, that the relics of some of them have been recently found in the Sanchi topes, and in other sacred buildings, contained in caskets, with their names inscribed on them. These inscribed names correspond with those given to the same missionaries in the historical books of Ceylon. For example, according to the _Mahawanso_, two missionaries, one named Kassapo (or Kasyapa), and the other called Majjhima (or Madhyama), went to preach in the region of the Himalayan Mountains. They journeyed, preached, suffered, and toiled, side by side, so the ancient history informs us,--a history composed in Ceylon in the fifth century of our era, with the aid of works still more ancient;[104] and now, when the second Sanchi tope was opened in 1851, by Major Cunningham, the relics of these very missionaries were discovered.[105] The tope was perfect in 1819, when visited by Captain Fell,--"not a stone fallen." And though afterward injured, in 1822, by some amateur relic-hunters, its contents remained intact. It is a solid hemisphere, built of rough stones without mortar, thirty-nine feet in diameter; it has a basement six feet high, projecting all around five feet, and so making a terrace. It is surrounded by a stone railing, with carved figures. In the centre of this tope was found a small chamber, made of six stones, containing the relic-box of white sandstone, about ten inches square. Inside this were four caskets of steatite (a sacred stone among the Buddhists), each containing small portions of burnt human bone. On the outside lid of one of these boxes was this inscription: "Relics of the emancipated Kasyapa Gotra, missionary to the whole Hemawanta." And on the inside of the lid was carved: "Relics of the emancipated Madhyama." These relics, with those of eight other leading men of the Buddhist Church, had rested in this monument since the age of Asoka, and cannot have been placed there later than B.C. 220.