I wrote fairly extensively on this in my Sects & Sectarianism.
Not really. One of the problems, in my view, is that much of the scholarship around the Councils and the schisms is flawed. For example, many scholars say the Third Council was a âparty meetingâ of the Theravadins, but this is based on false premises: there was no Theravadin school at the time. The schisms were later.
There are some things that are fairly well known. For example, the commentary says that the âchorusâ interludes in the Bakkula Sutta were added at the Second Council. taking this, and some similar comments, we can begin to get an idea.
One problem is that most accounts of the Second Council donât even mention textual redaction at all, but focus solely on the Vinaya issues.
May have been, yes. With a few exceptions such as noted above, we donât have direct evidence for what may have been added then. However, it is a convenient date for things that are somewhat later than the Buddha, but still predating the schisms and Ashoka.
The general idea is that the Second Council focuses on a strict enforcement of the Vinaya, and hence was managed by a wing of the Sangha who might be called ârigoristsâ as opposed to the more liberal âlaxistsâ. This division mirrors the canonical conflict between MahÄkassapa and Änanda; although it is possible that the earlier conflict was invented or modified as archetype for the later.
The laxist wing was centered around Vesali, but seems to have associated with the traditional homelands of the Buddha. This would mirror the situation that can be seen today, where new converts and missionaries are often more strict than those in the homeland.
This then explains the expansion, or perhaps invention, of the Bakkula Sutta, a rigorist text. It also suggests that the role of MahÄkassapa in the first Council may have been expanded to suit this narrative, especially his condemnation of Änanda for supporting women and bhikkhuni ordination.
One of the details that I note in Sects & Sectarianism is that the account of the Second Council, which is the very last chapter in the Vinaya Khandhaka, is vivid and lifelike as compared to the First Council. It is rather less like mythology and rather more like journalism.
I propose that the system of 20 Khandhakas + 2 final chapters for the Councils was added at the Second Council, or at least formalized then. This brings the entire life story of the Buddha and the establishment of the Sangha under the wing of the Second Council, so to speak. The language and idioms used in the Second Council echo throughout this extended narrative, making it appear as if the whole story of the Buddha serves as an origin story, a mythic authorization, for the decisions made at the Second Council.
This doesnât mean, of course, that all this material was invented at that time, merely that it was organized and edited in the form we have it today.
