(b) Critical.—­There are thirteen catalogues of the Tripitaka as it existed at different periods.  Several of them contain biographical accounts of the translators and other notes.  The work called Chen-cheng-lun criticizes several false sutras and names.  There are also several encyclopaedic works containing extracts from the Tripitaka, arranged according to subjects, such as the Fa-yuan-chu-lin[738] in 100 volumes; concordances of numerical categories and a dictionary of Sanskrit terms, Fan-i-ming-i-chi,[739] composed in 1151.

(c) The literature of several Chinese sects is well represented.  Thus there are more than sixty works belonging to the T’ien T’ai school beginning with the San-ta-pu or three great books attributed to the founder and ending with the ecclesiastical history of Chih-p’an, written about 1270.  The Hua-yen school is represented by the writings of four patriarchs and five monks:  the Lu or Vinaya school by eight works attributed to its founder, and the Contemplative School by a sutra ascribed to Hui-neng, the sixth patriarch, by works on the history of the Patriarchs and by several collections of sayings or short compositions.

(d) Controversial.—­Under this heading may be mentioned polemics against Taoism, including two collections of the controversies which took place between Buddhists and Taoists from A.D. 71 till A.D. 730:  replies to the attacks made against Buddhism by Confucian scholars and refutations of the objections raised by sceptics or heretics such as the Che-i-lun and the Yuan-jen-lun, or Origin of man.[740] This latter is a well-known text-book written by the fifth Patriarch of the Hua-yen school and while criticizing Confucianism, Taoism, and the Hinayana, treats them as imperfect rather than as wholly erroneous.[741] Still more conciliatory is the Treatise on the three religions composed by Liu Mi of the Yuan dynasty,[742] which asserts that all three deserve respect as teaching the practice of virtue.  It attacks, however, anti-Buddhist Confucianists such as Han-Yu and Chu-Hsi.

The Chinese section contains three compositions attributed to imperial personages of the Ming, viz., a collection of the prefaces and laudatory verses written by the Emperor T’ai-Tsung, the Shen-Seng-Chuan or memoirs of remarkable monks with a preface by the Emperor Ch’eng-tsu, and a curious book by his consort the Empress Jen-Hsiao, introducing a sutra which Her Majesty states was miraculously revealed to her on New Year’s day, 1398 (see Nanjio, No. 1657).

Though the Hindus were careful students and guardians of their sacred works, their temperament did not dispose them to define and limit the scriptures.  But, as I have mentioned above,[743] there is some evidence that there was a loose Mahayanist canon in India which was the origin of the arrangement found in the Chinese Tripitaka, in so far as it (1) accepted Hinayanist as well as Mahayanist works, and (2) included a great number of relatively late sutras, arranged in classes such as Prajnaparamita and Mahasannipata.