Among them were--(1.) Ma-ming, or "Ashwagosha," the twelfth patriarch, who wrote K'i-sin-lun, the "Shastra for awakening faith." (2.) Lung-shu, or "Nagarjuna," the fourteenth patriarch, author of Vibhasha-lun, Chung-lun, Ta-chi-tu-lun, Prajna-teng-lun, Shi-er-men-lun, and several other works, including the most venerated of all the Buddhist books in China, the Hwa-yen-king. (3.) T'ien-ts'in, or "Vasubandu." It is said of him, that when he first became a monk he was a bitter enemy of the Mahayana books, and destroyed them whenever he had opportunity. By the influence of his elder brother Asengha, he was brought to change his views. His remorse was such that he would have wrenched out his tongue, but Asengha said to him, "as he had formerly used his tongue to revile the Great Development books, he should now employ it to praise them. This would be an expiation for his fault." After this he wrote more than a hundred works, which were placed in the third division of the sacred books.

(4.) Wu-cho, or "Asengha," brother of the last. (5.) Hu-fa, or "Dharmapara" (Protector of the law). He was born in the Dravida country in South India. He wrote the Shastra Ch'eng-wei-shi-lun. (6.) Maitreya. (7.) Deva. (8.) Sheng-t'ien. These and one or two more are mentioned among the authors of Shastras. All these persons are dignified with the name of Bodhisattwa.

The authorship of the Hwa-yen-king may be ascribed to Lung-shu, on the ground that he is said in a Chinese preface to have discovered it in the "Dragon palace," and first promulgated it as one of the Mahayana Sutras, or books of the "Great vehicle." He could not prefix his name to it as to works of the third division, because it is essential to a Sutra that it be a discourse of Buddha. In conformity with this principle, the Great Development "Sutras," or as they are called in Chinese King, are by a fiction ascribed to Shakyamuni, though their real authors were, as there is every reason to suppose, the acute-minded Hindoos whose names have just been given.

Two principal divisions of the Buddhist books, in reference to the time of their composition, are thus obtained. The former belonging to the fifth century B.C. contain, among other things, the monastic institutions, the moral code, the ascetic life, the metempsychosis, and the Nirvana, of which the first two are Buddhist, and the latter three common to the native religions of India. The whole is interwoven with the fantastic notions of the Hindoos on geography, astronomy, and supernatural beings.