The Eighteen Schools
It is commonly said that there were eighteen schools of Buddhism in this period. What this actually means is more subtle. First, although the word "school" is used, there was not yet an institutional split in the saṅgha. The Chinese traveler Xuanzang observed even when the Mahāyāna were beginning to emerge out of this era that monks of different schools would live side by side in dormitories and attend the same lectures. Only the books that they read were different. Secondly, no historical source can agree what the names of these "eighteen schools" were. The origin of this saying is therefore unclear.
What follows are the lists given by each of the different sources.
Read more about this topic: Early Buddhist Schools
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