have been defended by a certain Katyayaniputra, who is seen as the founder of Sarvastivada. Another function of the council was that emissaries were sent to various countries in order to spread Buddhism, as far as the Greek kingdoms in the West (in particular the neighboring Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, and possibly even farther according to the inscriptions left on stone pillars by Ashoka). Sarvāstivāda account An entirely different account of a council during the reign of Ashoka is found in the works of the Sarvāstivāda tradition, which instead describe the first schism as occurring during the reign of Ashoka. Vasumitra tells of a dispute in Pātaliputra at the time of Ashoka over five heretical points downplaying the enlightenment of the arhat as the source of the first schism. These "five points" describe an arhat as one still characterized by impurity due to semen release (asucisukhavisaṭṭhi), ignorance (aññāṇa), doubt (kaṅkhā), reaching enlightenment through the guidance of others (paravitāraṇa), and speaking of suffering while in samādhi (vacibheda). These same points are discussed and condemned in Moggaliputta Tissa's Kathavatthu, but there is no mention of this Council in Theravadin sources. The later Mahavibhasa develops this story into an attack against the Mahasanghika founder, who it identifies as "Mahadeva". According to this version of events, the king (who would be Ashoka at this time) ends up supporting the Mahasanghikas. This version of events emphasizes the purity of the Kasmiri Sarvastivadins, who are portrayed as descended from the arahants who fled persecution due to Mahadeva and, led by Upagupta, established themselves in Kashmir and Gandhara. The two "Fourth Councils" Theravāda By the time of the Fourth Buddhist Councils, Buddhism had splintered into different schools in different regions of India. The Southern Theravāda school had a Fourth Buddhist Council in the first century BCE in Sri Lanka at Alu Vihāra (Aloka Leṇa) during the time of King Vattagamani-Abhaya. The council was held in response to a year in which the harvests in Sri Lanka were particularly poor and many Buddhist monks subsequently died of starvation. Because the Pāli Canon was at that time oral literature maintained in several recensions by dhammabhāṇakas (dharma reciters), the surviving monks recognized the danger of not writing it down so that even if some of the monks whose duty it was to study and remember parts of the Canon for later generations died, the teachings would not be lost. Sarvāstivāda Another Fourth