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.