Introduction
Devadatta was a cousin of the Buddha through the Koliya line, originally one of his ordained monks before a growing rivalry led him to attempt both a schism in the Sangha and, according to tradition, the Buddha's own death.
Family
- Father: Suppabuddha
- Siblings: Yasodhara
Rivalry, Schism, and Repentance
Traditional accounts describe Devadatta attempting to kill the Buddha by rolling a boulder down a hill, releasing a rampaging elephant into his path, and hiring assassins, none of which succeeded. He later split from the Sangha with a group of followers who accepted his proposed stricter monastic rules, before, according to most traditions, eventually repenting of his actions, though accounts differ on whether reconciliation occurred before his death. Devadatta became a stock figure in later Buddhist literature representing envy, ambition, and the dangers of schism within a religious community.
This article follows the Pali Canon and its commentarial tradition as the primary early Buddhist textual source; where sources genuinely disagree on a detail (such as an exact parentage), that disagreement is noted rather than resolved into a single invented certainty.