The Fourth Council

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In the second century, King Kanishka, the third ruler of the Kushana dynasty and rivaled only by King Ashoka in his protection of Buddhism, spared no effort to build temples and promote the spread of Buddhism.

By this time, Buddhism in India had become divided into many contentious schools, with each school proclaiming supremacy over its rivals.

In the midst of this widespread controversy, the patron King Kanishka asked Parshva, the Buddha’s tenth successor, to call together an assembly of five hundred monks and others in an attempt to unify the warring schools of Buddhism. The council met in Kashmir to consolidate the Buddha’s three divisions of canon. The Rise of Mahayana Buddhism

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