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Divisions among the early Buddhist schools came about due to doctrinal or practical differences in the views of the Buddhist Sangha following the death of the Buddha.
The first division occurred around 100 years after the death of the Buddha, and resulted in the Sthaviravdin and Mahsanghaka schools. Opinions differ on the cause of the split with the Sthaviravādins recording that the other party were lax monks who had ceased to follow all the Vinaya rules. The Mahāsanghikas, however, pointed to the Sthaviravādin wishing to add more rules to the Vinaya.
Following the first division, the Mahāsanghikas split into several sub-schools of minor importance.
The Sthaviravdin School had, by the time of King Ashoka divided into three sub-schools. It was regrouped during the Third Council under the name of Vibhajyavdins , but later it revert back to it old name under Pali language as Theravada. The Sammitiya School later became known as the Pudgalavādin but died out around the 9th or 10th century CE. The Sarvāstivādin school, was most prominent in the northwest of India and provided some of the doctrines that would later be adopted by the Mahyana. It split into two major sub-sects, the Vaibhāsika and Sautrāntika Schools.
Although some texts mention eighteen schools in India, by the time the Chinese Pilgrims Xuanzang and Yi Jing visited India in the medieval period there were five that they mention far more frequently than others.
The Theravda School of Sri Lanka, Burma, and ThailandThe Kingdom of Thailand is a country in southeast Asia, bordering Laos and Cambodia to the east, the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia to the south, and the Andaman Sea and Myanmar to the west. Thailand is also known as Siam which was the country's official n is descended from the Sthaviravādin School.
Some remnants of other early schools do still exist: the GelukThe Geluk (dge lugs) School was founded by Tsongkhapa ( 1357- 1419), Tibet's best known religious reformer and arguably its greatest philosopher. The first monastery he established was that of Ganden, and to this day its head, the Ganden Tripa is nominal School of Tibetan BuddhismTibetan Buddhism (formerly also called Lamaism after their religious gurus known as lamas), is the body of religious Buddhist doctrine and institutions characteristic of Tibet and the Himalayan region. It is a school within Tantric Buddhism (also called V still use a SarvstivdaThe Sarvastivada (roughly, "Proclaiming that all exist") a reference to one of the distinguishing doctrines of the school, the existence of dharmas in all of "the three times" (past, present, and future). The Sarvastivada are one of only two of the "Early vinaya, and Chinese schools use one from the Dharmagupta school. Fragments of the canon of texts from these schools also survive such as the Mahavastu of the Mahsnghika School.