King Asoka and Buddhism - Urban Dharma

the Vinaya. Some of them tended the sacrificial fire, some subjectedthemselves to the heat of the five fires, some worshippedthe sun following its movements in the sky, while others madea determined effort to destroy the Dhamma and the Vinaya. Atthat time the Order of monks held neither the uposatha nor thepavāraṇa with them.The uposatha at Asokārāma was interrupted for seven years.They informed the King too of this matter. The King commandeda minister to go to the monastery and settle the disputeand revive the uposatha.Next follows the description of the minister’s abortive attemptat uniting the Saṅgha, by beheading the monks. The King wasgreatly upset that he was responsible for the killing. MoggaliputtaTissa was with great difficulty persuaded to come backto Pāṭaliputta, and he finally reassured the King that he wasnot responsible for the minister’s misguided act.The narrative continues: 18In this manner the Elder reassured the King: and living therein the King’s park itself, for seven days he instructed the Kingon the Teaching. 19 On the seventh day, the King had the Orderof monks assembled at Asokārāma, and having had an enclosureof screens put round, he sat within that enclosure, andseparately grouping together monks who held divergent views,and summoning each group of monks he asked, “What teachingdid the Perfectly Enlightened One declare?” Then the eternalistsreplied that he was an etemalist. The qualified etemalists,the propounders of the theory of finiteness and infinitude,the eel-wrigglers, casuists, those who held theories of consciousexistence, non-conscious existence, neither conscious nor nonconsciousexistence, annihilationists and those who professedNibbāna of this life, replied (in accordance with their views).Since the King had already studied the Teaching he realizedthat they were not monks but heretics belonging to foreign sects;99