50. For Danxia, Lingmo, and Zhaoti, see ZTJ 4.96, ZTJ 15.333, and ZTJ 4.102, respectively; for Deng Yinfeng see CDL 6, T 51.246b; and for Daotong and Daowu, see SGSZ 10, T 50.777c, and T 50.769a–70a, respectively. 51. Pang Yun might be an exception, but the sources are at odds about the sequence of his meetings with Mazu and
Shitou. While his record of sayings and biography in CDL 8, T 51.263b, state that he met Shitou first, according to ZTJ he initially went together with Danxia to see Mazu. See Danxia's biography in ZTJ 4.95. In Shitou's biography in ZTJ 4.92, there is also a story in which an anonymous monk from Mazu's community comes to visit him. The monk returns to Mazu after taking leave of Shitou, but there is no indication that he acted on Shitou's advice.
52. SGSZ 9, T 50.764a; English translation from Cheng-chien, Sun-Face Buddha, 19. 53. See the discussion in the next section.
54. Later Chan texts that use lineage affiliation as a key organizing principle define Yaoshan's relationship with Mazu and Shitou according to the sectarian predilections of their authors or the sources they used. The later (i.e., post- Tang) Chan tradition came to regard Yaoshan, together with Daowu, as one of Shitou's two main disciples. Accordingly, Chan texts composed from the late tenth century and after—such as SGSZ, CDL, and ZTJ—list Yaoshan as a disciple of Shitou.
However, the text of his stele inscription (which is of questionable authenticity) states that he was disciple of Mazu and makes no mention of Shitou. See QTW 536.5443b–45a.
55. See his biography in SGSZ 10, T 50.769a–b. Early records—including Mazu's and Huairang's stele inscriptions and Zongmi's writings—present Daowu as a disciple of Mazu, and he seems to have been predominantly perceived as such during the mid-Tang period. Conversely, in later texts, beginning with ZTJ and CDL, he is listed as a disciple of Shitou.
56. The compilers of both ZTJ and CDL classified Daowu as a successor of Shitou, but some early Song Linji monks rejected this genealogy and argued that Daowu was Mazu's disciple. They contended, based on the evidence provided by a stele inscription written for Daowu of Tianwang monastery (regarded by some to be a forgery), that during the mid-Tang period there were two monks called Daowu: one the ancestor of the Yunmen and Fayan traditions who was a disciple of Mazu, the other one a disciple of Shitou.
57. Xingfusi neidaochang gongfeng dade dayi chanshi beiming, QTW 715.3258a–59a.
58. For more on Zongmi's text, see Jeffrey L. Broughton, “Tsung-mi's Zen Prolegomenon: Introduction to an Exemplary Zen Canon.”
59. The Northern, Southern, and Niutou schools are also treated as the main branches of Chan in an inscription composed by Li Hua composed some half a century earlier (discussed in the section “Reconfiguration of Chan Orthodoxy”).
60. See Gregory, Tsung-mi, 224–25. 61. QTW 715.3258a.
62. Ibid.
63. See McRae, “Shen-hui and the Teaching of Sudden Enlightenment,” and The Northern School, 1–8.
64. See CDL 28, T 51.437c. For Huizhong's criticisms, see Ishii's “Nanyō Echū no nanpō shūshi no hihan ni tsuite,” as well as the discussion in the section “Some Critiques” in chapter 5.
65. QTW 715.3258a. 66. CDL 30, T 51.459b.
67. Xijing xingshansi chuanfatang bei, QTW 678.3069c–70a. 68. QTW 678.3069c.
69. The historical study of Chinese Buddhism is often approached in terms of distinct “schools” (zong). The Chinese term zong is a source of confusion—evident, for example, when zong is mistranslated as “sect” in discussions of Tang Buddhism—largely stemming from its multivalent connotations and the different historical contexts in which it was employed. In the medieval context, zong covers a broad semantic field. It can mean a specific religious doctrine or interpretation; an essential purport or teaching, especially of a canonical text; an exegetical tradition; or a religious group formed on the basis of shared religious ideals and/or adherence to a set of principles. The last sense is applicable to the Hongzhou school, but even there it does not denote a separate sect, as defined by sociologists of religion. The distinct schools of Buddhism that emerged during the late medieval period lacked institutional independence. Some of them, such as Dilun, Shelun, Faxiang, Sanlun, and even Huayan, primarily represented doctrinal or exegetical traditions. Others, such
as Chan and Tiantai, evolved into distinct, loosely organized religious groups, but they were also subsumed within the mainstream monastic order.
70. The central role of Bodhidharma is evident in early Chan texts such as Lengqie shizi ji and Baolin zhuan and in epigraphic sources such as Huaihui's stele inscription (see QTW 501.2260b).
71. Griffith Foulk and others have raised questions about the identity of Tang Chan as a distinct tradition. For example, in the conclusion of his dissertation Foulk writes, “I doubt that the members of the Chan school ever … made a break with the Buddhist monastic tradition that resulted in the establishment of separate, independent, uniquely ‘Chan’ institutions”; Foulk, “The Ch'an School and Its Place in the Buddhist Monastic Tradition,” 389. I partially agree with Foulk's statement as far as the institutional history of Tang Chan is concerned. However, that does not preclude the existence of a distinct identity as a religious tradition, even if institutionally the Chan school was integrated into the monastic order. There are numerous mentions in Tang sources, including the inscriptions introduced above, of the Chan school as a distinct tradition. There are also statements to the effect that the various Chan schools/lineages were subsumed within a single tradition. For an example, see Baizhang's inscription in QTW 446.2014a. We also find similar statements in non-Buddhist texts, including the poems of Bo Juyi. In a number of poems Bo explicitly mentions the “Chan of the Southern school” (Nanzong chan), and he makes mention of “Bodhidharma's mind transmission.” For examples of the first, see Bo
Juyi ji 6.125, 45.968; for the second, see Bo Juyi ji 31.711. For references to sitting meditation (zuochan)—which
need not necessarily be tied to a distinctive Chan school, although that is often implied—see Bo Juyi ji 6.120, 25.558, 29.662, 31.712, 35.802, 35.804, and 36.827.
72. Both normative and modern historiography blur the distinction between the categories of “school” and “lineage,” both of which are feasible translations of zong. Foulk has drawn attention to the need to distinguish between “lineage” as a semimythological creation, a spiritual clan in which individuals are linked by Dharma inheritance, and “school” as a historical one, made up of real persons united by common sets of beliefs and practices; Foulk “The Ch'an Tsung in Medieval China: School, Lineage, or What?” 19–20. While this distinction has its usefulness, it is not without problems as both meanings overlap and intersect, and they are both applicable in the case of the Hongzhou school. The notion of “lineage” has a narrower range of connotation and is one of the elements that made Mazu and his disciples function as a “school,” albeit one without distinctive institutional moorings, which would imply separate ordinations, monasteries, and so forth. In other words, the notion of linear descendants implied by the genealogical model was part of a group identity that also included common beliefs, teachings, and practices, which are subsumed under the category of “school.” Since the early sources collapse the distinction between lineage and school, at the risk of introducing some vagueness I have reflected that ambiguity by using both terms as appropriate.
73. For the Tiantai school's efforts to construct its own religious genealogy, which to a substantial degree were a response to developments within the Chan school, see Penkower, “T'ian-t'ai during the T'ang Dynasty,” 220–299. 74. See Zhonghua chuan xindi chanmen shizi chengxi tu, XZJ 110.434b, 438a.
75. QTW 446.2014a. Inscriptions from the same period often invoke Huineng as a source of authority and an exemplar of orthodoxy, which suggests that by that time his position as the sixth Chan patriarch was firmly established.
76. Bo juyi ji 41.911 (vol. 3).
77. Hu Shi first pointed out this idiosyncrasy in 1928; see his “Bo Juyi shidaide chanzong shixi,” reprinted in Huang Xianian, Hu Shi ji, 36–39. It is also discussed in Yanagida, Shoki zenshū shisho no kenkyū, 396.
78. Chu sanzang jiji 12, T 55.90a.
79. See Shiina Kōyū, “Hōrinden makikyū makiju no itsubun,” 195, and Yanagida, Shoki zenshū shisho no kenkyū, 357–61. 80. See McRae, The Northern School, 240. This modern reinterpretation was made possible by the discovery of a few significant texts attributed to Shenhui among the Dunhuang manuscripts. Hu Shih first noted the significance of Shenhui's anti–Northern school campaigns in the 1930s, and other Chan/Zen scholars, including Yanagida, subsequently explored it. Shenhui is the subject of a manuscript by John R. McRae, Zen Evangelist: Shenhui
(684–758), the Sudden Teaching, and the Southern School of Chinese Chan Buddhism.
81. Hirai Shunei, “The School of Mount Niu-t'ou and the School of Pao-T'ang Monastery,” 359. According to the author of Lidai fabao ji, their tradition was older than the division between the Northern and Southern schools, as it went back to Zhishen, a disciple of the fifth patriarch Hongren. In support of these claims, he recounts a peculiar version of the fictional story about the transmission of the patriarchal robe, which was supposedly handed down to Wuzhu. See Yanagida, “The Li-Tai Fa-Pao Chi,” 21–22.
82. See McRae, “The Ox-head School,” 201–2.
83. See Gu zouxi dashi bei, QTW 320.1433a, and Yampolsky, The Platform Sutra, 38–39. 84. See the discussion of Dayi in “Mazu's Disciples in Chang'an” in chapter 2.
85. See Robert Buswell, The Korean Approach to Zen: The Collected Works of Chinul, 9, and The Formation of Ch'an Ideology in
China and Korea: The Vajrasamādhi-Sūtra, A Buddhist Apocryphon, 166–68.
86. See Chōsen Sōtokufu, Chōsen kinseki sōran, 90–91, and Faure, The Will to Orthodoxy, 47.
87. This table is based on tables that appear in Chŏng Sŏng-bon, Silla sŏnjong ŭi yŏn'gu, 51–52, and Robert Buswell, The
Korean Approach to Zen, 10–11. In the last column, CKS is an abbreviation for Chōsen kinseki sōran. Some of the
dates are problematic; for example, Hyŏnuk could not have studied with Huaihui after 824, since Huaihui died in 816.
88. Damei's Korean disciples are mentioned in CDL 10, T 51.273b, 280a. For the names of other Korean monks mentioned in CDL who were students of Mazu's first- through third-generation disciples, see the chart in Han Kidu, “Keitoku Dentōroku ni miru Shiragi zen,” 131.
89. See McRae, The Northern School, 67–69, 242–44, and Faure, The Will to Orthodoxy, 91–93. 90. For the connection with Vietnam, see below.
92. Ibid., 184.
93. For studies of the Caodong school, both of which focus on the Song period, see Ishii Shūdō, Sōdai zenshūshi no
kenkyū: Chūgoku sōtōshū to dōgen zen, and Morten Schlütter, “Chan Buddhism in Song-Dynasty China (960–1279):
The Rise of the Caodong Tradition and the Formation of the Chan School.” 94. XZJ 110.439d
95. The standing of Mazu and his disciples within the world of Song Chan is evident in the famous gongan collections, which exemplify the Chan school's literary production during that period. For example, Mazu and his first- and second-generation disciples appear in almost a third of the hundred cases included in Biyan lu. Mazu appears in two cases, his first-generation disciples in fourteen cases, second-generation disciples in fifteen cases, and an additional sixcases feature third-generation disciples.
96. Cuong Tu Nguyen, Zen in Medieval Vietnam: A Study and Translation of the Thi n Uyê?n Tập Anh, 44.