Where the women's sangha was founded and the second council convened.
The Buddha's aunt and stepmother who raised him after Mayadevi's death. After her husband Suddhodana's death, she walked from Kapilavastu to Vaishali with five hundred Shakya women, heads shaven, robed in yellow, and stood at the gate of the monastery until the Buddha agreed to ordain women. She was the first bhikkhuni; she opened the door.
The three early councils — at Rajgir (c. 483 BCE), Vaishali (c. 383 BCE), and Pataliputra (c. 250 BCE under Ashoka) — that fixed the canon, produced the first schism between Sthaviravadins and Mahasamghikas, and dispatched the dharma across Asia.
Three months after the Buddha's parinirvana, five hundred arahants gathered in the Sattapanni Cave at Rajagriha under the elder Mahakassapa to recite the discourses and the rule from memory. The First Council is the moment the dharma becomes a canon.
The Announcement.
