Buddhamitra rose, made obeisance, walked seven steps, and then pronounced the following Gatha:--"If my father and mother are not my nearest of kin, who is so? If the Buddhas are not my teachers, who are my teachers?" Buddhanandi replied, "You speak of your nearest relative being the heart. To this your love for your parents is not comparable. Your acting in accordance with 'doctrine' (tau) is the mind of the Buddhas. The Buddha of the wai tau (heretical teachers) belongs to the world of forms. Their Buddha and you are not alike. You should know that your real mind is neither closely attached nor separated." He further said to the father:--"Your son formerly met with Buddha, and, stimulated by compassion, had great longings to benefit others. But because he has thought too much of his father's and mother's love, who could not let him go, he has not spoken nor walked." The aged father hearing this, at once let him leave the family to become a monk.

When Michaka (in Eitel, Mikkaka; in San-kiau-yi-su, Misuchaka) was about to die, he intrusted to Buddhanandi the correct Dharma to teach to mankind.

Such is the statement of Chi-p'an of the Kiau-men in Fo-tsu-t'ung-ki. He rejects Vasumitra, the seventh patriarch of the contemplatist school. He does not even mention Vasumitra, who yet was very distinguished. He took a chief part in the last revision of the canon, as president of the third or fourth synod, under Kanishka, Rajah of Cashmere, B.C. 153. To this, Eitel adds, that he must

have died soon after, though Chinese chronology places his death in B.C. 590.

The Kiau-men writers apparently say little about the synods or councils, perhaps because they were presided over by the patriarchs, who favoured the contemplatist school. Can this be the reason that Chi-p'an has neglected the seventh patriarch and caused Michaka to nominate Buddhanandi (the eighth) as his successor, making him the seventh?

From this point I prefer to follow San-kiau-yi-su and Eitel in numbering the patriarchs, while continuing to take the story of their lives from the interesting pages of Fo-tsu-t'ung-ki, because the author is full of anecdote.

Chi-p'an, to fill the vacancy caused by the omission of Vasumitra, mentions Madhyantika, a disciple of Ananda, who converted Cashmere. He was contemporary with Shangnavasu. Buddhamitra passed at once through the steps of enlightenment, and began to teach the correct Dharma.