Which Buddhist council is traditionally said to have taken place at Vaishali?

The Second Buddhist Council is traditionally said to have taken place at Vaishali, an ancient city in present-day Bihar, India. Buddhist sources place the meeting roughly a century after the Buddha’s death, although exact chronology and historical details remain debated.

The council is associated with a dispute over monastic practices followed by monks at Vaishali. One major issue concerned accepting money, while other disputed practices involved food, storage, and customary discipline. Elders opposed these practices as inconsistent with the monastic code, or Vinaya.

Traditional accounts say the council reaffirmed stricter disciplinary standards. Some later sources connect the controversy with an early division in the Buddhist community, especially the emergence of the Mahasanghika and Sthavira groups. Modern scholars caution that the council narratives were written and transmitted by competing Buddhist schools, so they should not be treated as a single neutral historical report.