The accounts of the schisms that have occurred in various religions over the centuries are typically told by one party or the other, presenting [one side] as the protagonist, the other as the antagonist. Each side has its hero, and every hero has a nemesis. In the case of Buddhism, the word translated as “schism” is “sanghabheda,” literally, “splitting the monastic community.” The hero is the Buddha. His nemesis is Devadatta. Their antagonism extends back over many lifetimes. In the jātaka literature, the stories of the Buddha’s past lives, Devadatta is often the villain, persecuting, and often murdering, the future buddha. In the story of Khantivādi, the gentle teacher of patience, Devadatta is the drunken king who has his executioner lop off the sage’s hands, feet, nose, and ears, asking him each time what he teaches. Khantivādi replies, “I teach patience.” In the story of Vessantara, Devadatta is the greedy brahmin Jūjuka, who asks Prince Vessantara to give him his children so that they can be his slaves. The prince agrees.

In the Buddha’s last lifetime, Devadatta is Prince Siddhārtha’s cousin and (in some versions) the brother of Ānanda. His antagonism toward the future buddha begins in their childhood, when he is bested by the prince in various manly arts. In one story, he kills an elephant that had been given to the prince. When it falls, its body blocks the gates of the city. Devadatta is unable to lift it but Prince Siddhārtha flips the carcass over the city walls with his toe.

When the Buddha returned to Kapilavastu in the first year after his enlightenment, a number of the residents of the city joined the order of monks, including his kinsman Ānanda and the low-caste barber Upāli. Devadatta also joined. By all accounts he was an exemplary monk for decades, praised by Śāriputra, who was renowned as the wisest of the Buddha’s disciples. Devadatta is also praised by the Buddha himself, counted as one of his eleven leading disciples. In various texts, he is described as a skilled meditator who has achieved magical powers and as an eloquent teacher of both monastic and lay disciples.

As the Buddha grew older, we must assume that there were questions about who would succeed him as leader of the order of monks and nuns. When he was 72 (he would die when he was 80), Devadatta is said to have asked what appears to be a legitimate, if perhaps self-interested, question. Rising in the assembly of monks, he threw his upper robe over his shoulder, approached the Buddha, and with joined palms said, “Lord, the Blessed One is now old, aged, burdened with years, advanced in life and come to the last stage. Let the Blessed One now rest. Let him dwell in bliss in the present life. Let him hand over the order of monks to me. I will govern the order of monks.” The Buddha refused. However, the Buddha often refused a first request, only to agree the third time. When Devadatta asked the third time, the Buddha again refused, adding, with uncharacteristic ire, “I would not hand over the order of monks even to Śāriputra and Maudgalyāyana. Why would I do so to a wastrel, a clot of spittle like you?”

Devadatta was sufficiently stung by the rebuke that he decided to assassinate the Buddha. With the help of the evil king Ajātaśatru, he enlisted thirty-one archers in an elaborate scheme to eliminate the Buddha—two archers assigned to kill the assassin, four archers assigned to kill the assassins of the assassins, and so on—in order to prevent any connection of Devadatta to the crime. However, the Buddha converted them all. Disgusted at their failure, Devadatta decided to do the deed himself.

The Buddha spent much time in the city of Rājagrha, giving many of his most famous sermons on Vulture Peak outside the city. He would sometimes take his evening walk in the shadow of the mountain. Knowing this, Devadatta climbed up the mountain and pushed down a boulder, hoping that it would crush the Buddha. As it rolled toward him, two outcroppings of rock miraculously emerged in the boulder’s path, blocking it. However, a shard of stone broke off and struck the Buddha’s foot, causing it to bleed, so much so that the famed physician Jivaka had to be summoned. Not to be deterred, Devadatta intoxicated a fierce elephant with palm wine and let him loose as the Buddha was begging for alms in the city. As the elephant charged him, the Buddha directed thoughts of love toward the raging beast. He stopped and knelt before the Buddha. The Buddha stroked his head in what would become a commonly depicted scene in Buddhist art.

Foiled three times in attempting to murder the Buddha, Devadatta decided to form his own order, one that would follow stricter rules than that of the Buddha. He went to the Buddha and asked him to institute five rules for all monks: (1) that they should live their entire lives in the forest, and not live in villages; (2) that they should live entirely on the alms they received from begging, and should not accept invitations to dine in the homes of the laity; (3) that they should wear only robes made from discarded rags, and should not accept offerings of cloth for robes from the laity; (4) that they should dwell at the foot of a tree, and not under a roof; (5) that they should not eat fish or meat. Devadatta’s hope and expectation was that the Buddha would refuse to institute these rules. Devadatta would then be able to attract those who wished to pursue this more ascetic life. The Buddha did indeed refuse, declaring that any monk who wished to obey these five rules could do so, with the provision that those who lived under a tree seek more permanent shelter during the annual rains retreat.

After the Buddha refused to require the practices suggested by Devadatta, he denounced the Buddha as lax and departed to form his own sangha, followed by five hundred newly ordained monks. The Buddha sent his two foremost disciples, Śāriputra and Maudgalyāyana, to retrieve them. When Devadatta saw them approaching, he was overjoyed, assuming that these prominent monks were coming to join his new order. After delivering a discourse to the monks, Devadatta invited Śāriputra to also do so while he took a nap. While Devadatta was asleep, Śāriputra convinced the five hundred monks to return to the fold. By the time Devadatta awoke, they were gone. Learning what had happened, he vomited blood and died. According to other accounts, he did not die; he eventually decided to repent and set off to seek the forgiveness of the Buddha. Sometimes his repentance is presented as sincere, sometimes it is sinister, as Devadatta decides to make one last attempt to assassinate the Buddha, planning to scratch him with fingernails dipped in poison. However, such were his sins that while en route, he was swallowed by the earth, descending to Avīci, the most horrific of the Buddhist hells, where he will remain impaled in a room of burning iron until the destruction of the current world system. Chinese pilgrims to India said that they saw the pit where he slowly sank into hell.

In Buddhist karma theory, five heinous misdeeds would be enumerated that lead immediately to rebirth in Avīci, sometimes called the five deeds of immediate retribution because one is reborn in Avīci immediately after death in the lifetime in which the deed is done. They are killing one’s father, killing one’s mother, killing an arhat, causing blood to flow from the Buddha, and causing a schism in the sangha. In the story we have told, Devadatta commits the last two of these. According to another story, when a nun who was also an arhat chastised him for attempting to kill the Buddha, he murdered her, thus committing a third heinous deed. He also convinced Prince Ajātaśatru to murder his father, King Bimbisāra, implicating himself in the prince’s crime. Thus, Devadatta becomes the sinner par excellence of the Buddhist tradition, his redemption in the Lotus Sūtra (Saddharmapundarīka)—where the Buddha predicts that Devadatta will become a buddha in the future—serving to prove that all beings are destined for supreme enlightenment.

We might see Devadatta as a site for the condensation of various disputes of the monastic community, with an elaborate story of villainy (extending over many lifetimes) provided as the frame.

Scholastic presentations of the five deeds of immediate retribution make it clear that, contrary to our modern sensibility, the worst of all sins is not murdering one’s parents but causing a schism in the sangha, as Devadatta so briefly did. What history, if any, can we derive from this colorful story? This valuation of a schism, and the Devadatta story more generally, may offer hints into the early evolution of the monastic community in India. Thus, whether or not there was a Devadatta, some insights might be drawn from his list of demands, and the tradition’s excoriation of the monk who is said to have made them.

We might imagine, for example, that the story was the product of a well-established, town-based monastic community, which sought to demonize those monks who practiced and promoted a more ascetic lifestyle, monks who in fact lived in the forest, wore rag robs, abstained from meat, and did not accept invitations to dine with the laity. In order to defend their more indulgent (monastically speaking) lifestyle, those who lived under roofs in villages, dressed in robes of new cloth, and ate meat in the homes of the laity identified the progenitor of these ascetic practices as a monk called Devadatta (the Sanskrit equivalent of “John Doe”), a person so depraved that he attempted to murder the Buddha three times (and murdered the bodhisattva many times in previous lives) and who created the first schism by demanding that monks follow his new rules.

However, in his Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga), composed in Sri Lanka in the 5th century CE, Buddhaghosa lists, approvingly, thirteen kinds of ascetic practice: the refuse-rag-wearer, the triple-robe-wearer, the alms-food-eater, the house-to-house-seeker, the one-sessioner, the bowl-food-eater, the later-food-refuser, the forest-dweller, the tree-root-dweller, the open-air-dweller, the charnel-ground-dweller, the any-bed-user, and the sitter. Most of these are self-explanatory, describing ascetics who only eat alms; who go from house to house on their alms round, not skipping houses where they know or expect they will be offered nothing; who eat their alms food in one sitting, without eating what is not in their bowl; or who refuse more food. A “sitter” is someone who takes a vow never to lie down. He describes each in detail. This suggests that some of the practices advocated by Devadatta were practiced in Sri Lanka in the 5th century CE.

The same Chinese pilgrims who saw the pit where Devadatta sank into the earth also claimed to find his followers in India. Faxian reports that these monks made offerings to the three previous buddhas but not to Śākyamuni. In Karnasuvarna, in what is today West Bengal, [the 7th-century Buddhist monk] Xuanzang found three monasteries where the monks did not eat curd, “in accordance with the teaching of Devadatta.” A later Chinese pilgrim, Yijing (635–713), reports that followers of Devadatta were to be found all over India. He says that in general, they follow orthodox teachings, but tend to live on the outskirts of villages, use gourds (rather than vessels made of clay or metal) for their begging bowls, wear two rather than three robes that are the color of mulberry bark, and abstain from fermented milk products. When Yijing asked one such monk living at Nālandā Monastery whether he was therefore a follower of Devadatta, the monk denied it. Thus, we might see Devadatta as a site for the condensation of various disputes of the monastic community, with an elaborate story of villainy (extending over many lifetimes) provided as the frame. The losing party is personified in the Buddha’s nemesis.

And so the schism of Devadatta was short-lived. However, it is not the only schism that occurs in the life of the Buddha. Years earlier, a dispute had broken out among the monks of the city of Kauśāmbī over an admittedly minor matter. A monk who was learned in the sūtras had left some washing water in a vessel in the latrine. A monk who was learned in the monastic code asked him if he knew that doing so was an offense. The first monk admitted that he did not and offered to confess it. However, the second monk told him that if he did not know that it was an offense, there was no infraction and thus no need to confess it. This apparently harmless and friendly exchange about water left in a vessel in the latrine escalated into a cause célèbre, with the disciples of the two monks hurling insults at each other. As a result, the faction of the accuser suspended the accused monk, placing him on probation.

The Buddha was living in the monastery at the time and was informed of the dispute, a dispute that could lead to a schism in the community. The Buddha spoke to both factions, telling the faction of the accuser that they should not suspend such a learned monk over such a minor matter. He then went to the faction of the accused and told him that although he did not know that leaving the water in the vessel was an infraction, he should nonetheless confess it. However, in one of the rare moments in the canon where monks ignore the advice of the Buddha, both sides refused to concede. The Buddha became sufficiently perturbed that he left the monastery and went off into the woods, where he was able to spend the entire rains retreat in peace, saying to himself, “Formerly I lived in discomfort, pestered by the Kosambī bhikkhus who quarrel, brawl, wrangle, harangue, and litigate in the midst of the sangha. Now I am alone and companionless, living at ease and in comfort, away from all of them.” According to one version of the story, while living in the forest, the Buddha was tended by an elephant who had also become weary of the infighting of his fellow pachyderms.

The schism would continue to haunt Kauśāmbī. In one of the many Buddhist stories of how the dharma will disappear, it will end when all the monks left in India have gathered in that city under the protection of a pious king. By this time, monks will no longer maintain their vows. Only one arhat will remain. On the night of the fortnightly confession ceremony, the master of the monastery will rise to recite the monastic code, announcing that he will do so in brief. The arhat will request that he recite it in full. The master will respond that such a request can only be made by a monk who maintains all of the vows. The arhat will reply that he is such a monk. The followers of the master will become incensed by the arhat’s challenge to their teacher and will murder him. The gods, who hold the arhat in high esteem, will kill the master. The dharma will end in the world on that day.

♦

Excerpted from Buddhism: A Journey Through History © 2025 by Donald S. Lopez Jr. Reprinted with permission of Yale University Press. All rights reserved.