y to insure the correct transmission from
teacher to scholar of certain doctrines, and this precaution was
especially necessary in sects which rejected scriptural authority and
relied on personal instruction. So soon as there were several
competent teachers handing on the tradition such a safeguard was felt
to be unnecessary.

That this feeling was just is shown by the fact that the school of
Bodhidharma is still practically one in teaching. But its small regard
for scripture and insistence on oral instruction caused the principal
monasteries to regard themselves as centres with an apostolic
succession of their own and to form divisions which were geographical
rather than doctrinal. They are often called school (tsung), but
the term is not correct, if it implies that the difference is similar
to that which separates the Ch'an-tsung and Lu-tsung or schools of
contemplation and of discipline. Even in the lifetime of Hui-neng
there seems to have been a division, for he is sometimes called the
Patriarch of the South, Shen-Hsiu[807] being recognized as Patriarch
of the North. But all subsequent divisions of the Ch'an-tsung trace
their lineage to Hui-neng. Two of his disciples founded two schools
called Nan Yueh and Ch'ing Yuan[808] and between the eighth and tenth
centuries these produced respectively two and three subdivisions,
known together as Wu-tsung or five schools. They take their names from
the places where their founders dwelt and are the schools of Wei-Yang,
Lin-Chi, Ts'ao-Tung, Yun-Men and Fa-Yen.[809] This is the
chronological order, but the most important school is the Lin-Chi,
founded by I-Hsuan,[810] who resided on the banks of a river[811] in
Chih-li and died in 867. It is not easy to discriminate the special
doctrines[812] of the Lin-Chi for it became the dominant form of the
school to such an extent that other variants are little more than
names. But it appears to have insisted on the transmission of
spiritual truths not only by oral instruction but by a species of
telepathy between teacher and pupil culminating in sudden
illumination. At the present day the majority of Chinese monasteries
profess to belong to the Ch'an-tsung and it has encroached on other
schools. Thus it is now accepted on the sacred island of P'uto which
originally followed the Lu-tsung.

Although the Ch'an school did not value the study of scripture as part
of the spiritual life, yet it by no means neglected letters and can
point to