The more important schools were comparatively late, for they date from the sixth and seventh centuries.  For two or three hundred years the Buddhists of China were a colony of strangers, mainly occupied in making translations.  By the fifth century the extent and diversity of Indian literature became apparent and Fa-Hsien went to India to ascertain which was the most correct Vinaya and to obtain copies of it.  Theology was now sufficiently developed to give rise to two schools both Indian in origin and merely transported to China, known as Ch’eng-shih-tsung and San-lun-tsung.[791]

The first is considered as Hinayanist and equivalent to the Sautrantikas.[792] In the seventh century it passed over to Japan where it is known as Ji-jitsu-shu, but neither there nor in China had it much importance.  The San-lun-tsung recognizes as three authorities (from which it takes its name) the Madhyamikasastra and Dvadasanikayasastra of Nagarjuna with the Satasastra of his pupil Deva.  It is simply the school of these two doctors and represents the extreme of Mahayanism.  It had some importance in Japan, where it was called San-Ron-Shu.

The arrival of Bodhidharma at Canton in 520 (or 526) was a great event for the history of Buddhist dogma, although his special doctrines did not become popular until much later.  He introduced the contemplative school and also the institution of the Patriarchate, which for a time had some importance.  He wrote no books himself, but taught that true knowledge is gained in meditation by intuition[793] and communicated by transference of thought.  The best account of his teaching is contained in the Chinese treatise which reports the sermon preached by him before the Emperor Wu-Ti in 520.[794] The chief thesis of this discourse is that the only true reality is the Buddha nature[795] in the heart of every man.  Prayer, asceticism and good works are vain.  All that man need do is to turn his gaze inward and see the Buddha in his own heart.  This vision, which gives light and deliverance, comes in a moment.  It is a simple, natural act like swallowing or dreaming which cannot be taught or learnt, for it is not something imparted but an experience of the soul, and teaching can only prepare the way for it.  Some are impeded by their karma and are physically incapable of the vision, whatever their merits or piety may be, but for those to whom it comes it is inevitable and convincing.

We have only to substitute atman for Buddha or Buddha nature to see how closely this teaching resembles certain passages in the Upanishads, and the resemblance is particularly strong in such statements as that the Buddha nature reveals itself in dreams, or that it is so great that it embraces the universe and so small that the point of a needle cannot prick it.  The doctrine of Maya is clearly indicated, even if the word was not used in the original, for it is expressly said that all phenomena are unreal.  Thus the teaching of Bodhidharma is an anticipation of Sankara’s monism, but it is formulated in consistently Buddhist language and is in harmony with the views of the Madhyamika school and of the Diamond-cutter.  This Chinese sermon confirms other evidence which indicates that the ideas of the Advaita philosophy, though Brahmanic in their origin and severely condemned by Gotama himself, were elaborated in Buddhist circles before they were approved by orthodox Hindus.