Buddhism remained an entirely India religion. the king was named Ashoka his plan was to expand the rule over large parts of India naturally entailed much fighting. after a battle in east India Ashoka was inspecting the battlefield and he saw the scene was different then before. it was so horrible to him that he converted to the ideal if a non-violence. although but was uncertain weather he was Buddhism or not he make political use of Buddhist a moral value.

To bring a large number of the population around to his new nonviolent way of thinking and acting,Ashoka decided to spread the principles of non-violence throughout India and possibly even beyond. To do this, he erected many stone columns inscribed with his principles, placing some at sites important in the Buddha's life. A number of columns still exist today. Our historical knowledge of Ashoka is quiet limited, but he looms large in Buddhist legend. One story tells us sent as a missionary to Sri Lanka a son or a nephew named Mahinda. Whatever the truth of this story, it is a fact that Sri Lanka is largely Buddhist today. Indeed, it may have been Ashoka who gave Buddhism its urge to spread and helped to make it one of the world's great missionary religions.

In the first centuries after Buddha's death in the response to widespread of disagreements over Buddha teachings many Buddhist schools and splinter groups arose. Most of them survived and some died out and they crystallized into the great branches of Buddhism that we recognize today as: Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana. As years went on each branch emerged off each other after the earlier one, three waves of it came from the India succeeding centuries. scholars recognize that essential elements of all the branches frequently existed side by side like in the beginning of Buddhism. Sometimes monks of quite different practices lived in the same monasteries, and some still do and eventually some died out in certain regions like Myanmar no longer exist.

The three so-called branches are not homogeneous and monolithic. Within them are divisions and different understanding of belief and practice. The branches are more like families that have many shared elements. People who follow a specific Buddhist path are often not aware of other branches. Buddhist believers of one branch, even if they know of other forms.