The first followers
The Vinaya's Great Chapter tells what happened next. Yasa, the son of a rich merchant of Vārāṇasī, came to the Buddha and was ordained, followed by his friends. His parents became among the first lay followers, taking refuge in the Buddha, the teaching and the community.
Soon there were sixty monks, and the Buddha sent them out, each on his own road, 'for the welfare of the many, for the happiness of the many, out of compassion for the world'.
A growing community
Large groups joined: three brothers of the Kassapa clan who led fire-worshipping ascetics at Uruvelā, and later Sāriputta and Moggallāna, who became the Buddha's two chief disciples. King Bimbisāra of Magadha gave the community its first park, the Bamboo Grove at Rājagaha.
At first the Buddha ordained people himself with the words 'Come, monk'. Later the community was allowed to ordain new members, and a formal procedure developed.
Rules as they were needed
The monks and nuns lived by the Vinaya, the monastic discipline. The texts present each rule as a response to a specific problem: a monk behaved badly, lay people complained, and the Buddha set a rule. The community gathered for the rainy-season retreat each year and met twice a month to recite the rules.
Why it matters
Buddhism becomes not merely the realization of one person but a living teaching transmitted through a community.
History and tradition
What historians can say
The Vinaya's account was shaped by later monks who wanted to show how their institutions began, so its details are not a simple record. But the core, a disciplined community of renunciants supported by lay people, is clear across all the early sources.
What Buddhist tradition remembers
Tradition counts the sixty sent out to teach as arahants, fully awakened, and tells that the Buddha himself went back to Uruvelā to teach the Kassapa brothers.