CHAPTER VII.

THE SCHOOLS OF CHINESE BUDDHISM.

The growth of esoteric sects in India--The Jains--Their series of twenty-four patriarchs--Bodhidharma headed a new school in Southern India, and was heretical as viewed from the Jains' standpoint--He founded the contemplative school in China--Nagarjuna, the author of the most revered books of this school--Tsung-men--Kiau-men--Divisions of Tsung-men--The Tsung-men sects are heretical in the view of the old orthodoxy--Specimen of the teaching of the Tsung-men--Lin-tsi school--Professes strict discipline--Its founder died A.D. 868--His monument on the bank of the Hu-to river in Chi-li--Resemblance to European speculation on the absolute--Is Buddhism pantheistic?--Exoteric sects--Lu-men, (Vinaya)--Yogachara--Fa-siang--Madhyamika--Fa-sing--Tsing-tu, or sect of the "Pure land" or "Western heaven"--T'ien-t'ai--Poetry of the Tsing-tu school.

BUDDHISM, as a religion of books and images, with the vow of celibacy and the monastic system, had entered China, and been widely propagated for several centuries, before anything was heard of schools. Gradually the Chinese Buddhists came to know of patriarchs, of the contemplative school, and of its many subdivisions.

We are told that when the use of books was carried to excess, and the true nature of humanity veiled from view, Bodhidharma arrived with a tradition of his own teaching, that men by becoming conscious of their own nature would attain the state of Buddha. He became the chief founder of the esoteric schools, which were divided into five principal branches. The common word for the esoteric schools is dan, the

[paragraph continues] Sanscrit Dhyana, now called in the modern sound given to the character, ch'an.

Dr. Hamilton says, speaking of the Swaracs or Jains, a still existing Buddhist sect in India, that they worship twenty-four great teachers, who are called either Avatars or Tirthancaras. Tirtha is an incarnation or an heretical teacher or non-Buddhist ascetic of any sect. Rhode supposed the Jains to be descendants of the Asuras and Rakshas, races hostile to the early Hindoos. But they were rather a school.

The Chinese have the series of twenty-four patriarchs. They may be assumed to be the same with the Jaina twenty-four patriarchs. Bodhidharma will then be a heretic and continuator of an offshoot from the Jaina list of patriarchs, commencing with Basiasita. The location of this offshoot of the patriarchs, embracing the twenty-fifth, twenty-sixth, twenty-seventh, and twenty-eighth, was Southern India, for these four patriarchs were either natives of Southern India or were at least engaged in active labours there. Perhaps it will be better to say that the Jains and the school of Bodhidharma are both of them offshoots from a common stock, which recognised patriarchs from the time of Kashiapa, and maintained esoteric doctrine from that time.