DEVADATTA. – Cousin and disciple of the Buddha, who entered the monastic community in the twentieth year of the Perfect One’s preaching.
He aspired to a disciplinary reform of a more rigorously ascetic character, which he proposed to the Enlightened One; and when the latter refused to adopt it, between 487 and 485 B.C. he apostatized from the community with his followers, whom tradition puts at the number of 500. According to information from Chinese sources, the sect founded by this schismatic still existed in the seventh century A.D.
BIBL.: T. W. Rhys Davis, s. V. ENOCH. of Rel. and Eth., IV, pp. 675–77; L. Suali, Gotama Buddha, Bologna 1934, p. 371 ff. Ferdinando Belloni Filippi