it and without ignoring other
views. Though the Chu-she-tsung represented the best scholastic tradition
of India more adequately than any other Chinese sect, yet it was too
technical and arid to become popular and both in China and Japan (where it
is known as Kusha-shu) it was a system of scholastic philosophy rather than
a form of religion. In China it did not last many centuries.

The Fa-Hsiang school is similar inasmuch as it represented Indian
scholasticism and remained, though much esteemed, somewhat academic.
The name is a translation of Dharmalakshana and the school is also
known as Tz'u-en-tsung,[836] and also as Wei-shih-hsiang-chiao
because its principal text-book is the Ch'eng-wei-shih-lun.[837] This
name, equivalent to Vidyamatra, or Vijnanamatra, is the title of a
work by Hsuan Chuang which appears to be a digest of ten Sanskrit
commentaries on a little tract of thirty verses ascribed to
Vasubandhu. As ultimate authorities the school also recognizes the
revelations made to Asanga by Maitreya[838] and probably the
Mahayanasutralankara[839] expresses its views. It claims as its
founder Silabhadra the teacher of Hsuan Chuang, but the latter was
its real parent.

Closely allied to it but reckoned as distinct is the school called the
Hua-yen-tsung[840] because it was based on the Hua-yen-ching or
Avatamsakasutra. The doctrines of this work and of Nagarjuna may be
conveniently if not quite correctly contrasted as pantheistic and
nihilistic. The real founder and first patriarch was Tu-Fa-Shun who
died in 640 but the school sometimes bears the name of Hsien-Shou, the
posthumous title of its third Patriarch who contributed seven works to
the Tripitaka.[841] It began to wane in the tenth century but has
a distinguished literary record.

The Lu-tsung or Vinaya school[842] was founded by Tao Hsuan (595-667).
It differs from those already mentioned inasmuch as it emphasizes
discipline and asceticism as the essential part of the religious life.
Like the T'ien-t'ai this school arose in China. It bases itself on
Indian authorities, but it does not appear that in thus laying stress
on the Vinaya it imitated any Indian sect, although it caught the
spirit of the early Hinayana schools. The numerous works of the
founder indicate a practical temperament inclined not to mysticism or
doctrinal subtlety but to biography, literary history and church
government. Thus he continued the series called Memoirs of Eminent
Monks and wr