According to most schools there were only twenty-four Patriarchs.  These are said to have been foretold by the Buddha and twenty-four is a usual number in such series.[803] The twenty-fourth Patriarch Simha Bhikshu or Simhalaputra went to Kashmir and suffered martyrdom there at the hands of Mihirakula[804] without appointing a successor.  But the school of Bodhidharma continues the series, reckoning him as the twenty-eighth, and the first of the Chinese Patriarchs.  Now since the three Patriarchs between the martyr and Bodhidharma are all described as living in southern India, whereas such travellers as Fa-Hsien obviously thought that the true doctrine was to be found in northern India, and since Bodhidharma left India altogether, it is probable that the later Patriarchs represent the spiritual genealogy of some school which was not the Church as established at Nalanda.[805]

It will be convenient to summarize briefly here the history of Bodhidharma’s school.  Finding that his doctrines were not altogether acceptable to the Emperor Wu-Ti (who did not relish being told that his pious exertions were vain works of no value) he retired to Lo-yang and before his death designated as his successor Hui-k’o.  It is related of Hui-k’o that when he first applied for instruction he could not attract Bodhidharma’s attention and therefore stood before the sage’s door during a whole winter night until the snow reached his knees.  Bodhidharma indicated that he did not think this test of endurance remarkable.  Hui-k’o then took a knife, cut off his own arm and presented it to the teacher who accepted him as a pupil and ultimately gave him the insignia of the Patriarchate—­a robe and bowl.  He taught for thirty-four years and is said to have mixed freely with the lowest and most debauched reprobates.  His successors were Seng-ts’an, Tao-hsin, Hung-jen, and Hui-neng[806] who died in 713 and declined to nominate a successor, saying that the doctrine was well established.  The bowl of Bodhidharma was buried with him.  Thus the Patriarch was not willing to be an Erastian head of the Church and thought the Church could get on without him.  The object of the Patriarchate was simply to insure the correct transmission from teacher to scholar of certain doctrines, and this precaution was especially necessary in sects which rejected scriptural authority and relied on personal instruction.  So soon as there were several competent teachers handing on the tradition such a safeguard was felt to be unnecessary.

That this feeling was just is shown by the fact that the school of Bodhidharma is still practically one in teaching.  But its small regard for scripture and insistence on oral instruction caused the principal monasteries to regard themselves as centres with an apostolic succession of their own and to form divisions which were geographical rather than doctrinal.  They are often called school (tsung), but the term is not correct, if it implies that the difference is