DEVADATTA.— Cousin and disciple of the Buddha, who entered the monastic community in the twentieth year of the Perfect One’s preaching.
He cherished a disciplinary reform, of a more rigorously ascetic character, which he proposed to the Enlightened One; and since the latter refused to adopt it, between 487 and 485 B.C. he apostatized from the community with his followers, whom tradition numbers at 500. According to notices from Chinese sources, the sect founded by these ascetics still existed in the 7th 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.; Ferdinand Belloni Filippi