Devadatta is the tradition's inconvenient story and it was kept anyway. The Buddha's own cousin asked for leadership of the order, was refused, and moved to murder — and the schism he actually achieved came not from laxity but from demanding stricter rules than the Buddha required: compulsory forest-dwelling, rags only, no meat under any circumstances. The Buddha declined to make them mandatory and Devadatta left with a following. That a split can be led from the strict side, by someone claiming greater purity, is a lesson the Vinaya preserved deliberately, and later Chinese pilgrims reported communities still following Devadatta's rule centuries on.