similar to that which separates the Ch’an-tsung and Lu-tsung or schools of contemplation and of discipline.  Even in the lifetime of Hui-neng there seems to have been a division, for he is sometimes called the Patriarch of the South, Shen-Hsiu[807] being recognized as Patriarch of the North.  But all subsequent divisions of the Ch’an-tsung trace their lineage to Hui-neng.  Two of his disciples founded two schools called Nan Yueh and Ch’ing Yuan[808] and between the eighth and tenth centuries these produced respectively two and three subdivisions, known together as Wu-tsung or five schools.  They take their names from the places where their founders dwelt and are the schools of Wei-Yang, Lin-Chi, Ts’ao-Tung, Yun-Men and Fa-Yen.[809] This is the chronological order, but the most important school is the Lin-Chi, founded by I-Hsuan,[810] who resided on the banks of a river[811] in Chih-li and died in 867.  It is not easy to discriminate the special doctrines[812] of the Lin-Chi for it became the dominant form of the school to such an extent that other variants are little more than names.  But it appears to have insisted on the transmission of spiritual truths not only by oral instruction but by a species of telepathy between teacher and pupil culminating in sudden illumination.  At the present day the majority of Chinese monasteries profess to belong to the Ch’an-tsung and it has encroached on other schools.  Thus it is now accepted on the sacred island of P’uto which originally followed the Lu-tsung.

Although the Ch’an school did not value the study of scripture as part of the spiritual life, yet it by no means neglected letters and can point to a goodly array of ecclesiastical authors, extending down to modern times.[813] More than twenty of their treatises have been admitted into the Tripitaka.  Several of these are historical and discuss the succession of Patriarchs and abbots, but the most characteristic productions of the sect are collections of aphorisms, usually compiled by the disciples of a teacher who himself committed nothing to writing.[814]

In opposition to the Contemplative School or Tsung-men, all the others are sometimes classed together as Chiao-men.  This dichotomy perhaps does no more than justice to the importance of Bodhidharma’s school, but is hardly scientific, for, whatever may be the numerical proportion, the other schools differ from one another as much as they differ from it.  They all agree in recognizing the authority not only of a founder but of a special sacred book.  We may treat first of one which, like the Tsung-men, belongs specially to the Buddhism of the Far East and is both an offshoot of the Tsung-men and a protest against it—­there being nothing incompatible in this double relationship.  This is the T’ien-t’ai[815] school which takes its name from a celebrated monastery in the province of Che-kiang.  The founder of this establishment and of the sect was called Chih-K’ai or Chih-I[816] and followed originally Bodhidharma’s teaching,