Buddhist Councils were held four times. The First Council met at Rajagriha (modern Rajgir) in Bihar soon after the death of Gautama Buddha. It was attended by the Buddhist elders (Theras) and was presided over by one of Buddha’s prominent Brahman disciples, named Mahakassapa. As Buddha had left none of his teachings in writing so at this Council three of his disciples, Kasyapa, the most learned, Upali, the oldest and Ananda, the most favoured of Buddha’s disciples, recited his teachings which were at first learnt orally and transmitted by teachers to disciples and were much later on put down in writing. A century later a Second Council of the Buddhist elders met at Vaisali to settle a dispute that had arisen by that time amongst the Buddhist monks on certain questions of discipline. The Council decided in favour of rigid discipline and revised the Buddhist scriptures which were still unwritten. A Third Council met, according to tradition, 236 years after the death of Buddha, under the patronage of King Asoka Maurya. It was presided over by monk Tissa Moggaliputta, the author of the Kathavattu, a sacred Buddhist text. This Council is believed to have drawn up the Buddhist canon in the final form of the Tripitaka or the Three Baskets, and gave its decisions on all disputed points. If the Sarnath Pillar Edict of Asoka is correctly believed to have been issued after the session of this Third Council it can be rightly held that its decisions were not accepted by so many Buddhist monks and nuns that King Asoka found it necessary to threaten the schismatics with dire punishment. The Fourth and last Council of the Buddhist elders met during the reign of Kanishka, the Kushana king (c. A.D. 120-144). It drew up authentic commentaries on the canon and these were engraved on copper-plates which were encased in a stone-coffer and kept for safety in the Kundalavana monastery. These have not yet been found. , Buddha Quotes App You may also be interested in the Spiritual Quote of the Day Android App, which includes quotes from Mahatma Gandhi, Swami Vivekananda, Gautama Buddha and many more great beings., I have three things I'd like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition..