“After the Nirvana of the Tathagata,
There will be a man in the future,
Listen to me carefully, O Mahatma,
A man who will hold my law. 
In the great country of South,
There will be a venerable Bhiksu
The Bodhisattva Nagarjuna by name,
Who will destroy the views of Astikas and Nastikas,
Who will preach unto men my Yana,
The highest Law of the Mahayana,
And will attain to the Pramudita-bhumi.”

It is said that then he awoke to the perfect truth and declared:  “All animated and inanimate beings are Enlightened at the same time.”  According to the tradition[FN#17] of this sect Shakya Muni transmitted his mysterious doctrine from mind to mind to his oldest disciple Mahakacyapa at the assembly hold on the Mount of Holy Vulture, and the latter was acknowledged as the first patriarch, who, in turn, transmitted the doctrine to Ananda, the second patriarch, and so till Bodhidharma, the twenty-eighth[FN#18] patriarch.  We have little to say about the historical value of this tradition, but it is worth while to note that the list of the names of these twenty-eight patriarchs contains many eminent scholars of Mahayanism, or the later developed school of Buddhism, such as Acvaghosa,[FN#19] Nagarjuna,[FN#20] Kanadeva,[FN#21] and Vasubhandhu.[FN#22]

[FN#17] The incident is related as follows:  When the Buddha was at the assembly on the Mount of Holy Vulture, there came a Brahmaraja who offered the Teacher a golden flower, and asked him to preach the Dharma.  The Buddha took the flower and held it aloft in his hand, gazing at it in perfect silence.  None in the assembly could understand what he meant, except the venerable Mahakacyapa, who smiled at the Teacher.  Then the Buddha said:  “I have the Eye and Treasury of Good Dharma, Nirvana, the Wonderful Spirit, which I now hand over to Mahakacyapa.”  The book in which this incident is described is entitled ’Sutra on the Great Brahman King’s Questioning Buddha to Dispel a Doubt,’ but there exists no original text nor any Chinese translation in the Tripitaka.  It is highly probable that some early Chinese Zen scholar of the Sung dynasty (A.D. 960-1126) fabricated the tradition, because Wang Ngan Shih (O-an-seki), a powerful Minister under the Emperor Shan Tsung (Shin-so, A.D. 1068-1085), is said to have seen the book in the Imperial Library.  There is, however, no evidence, as far as we know, pointing to the existence of the Sutra in China.  In Japan there exists, in a form of manuscript, two different translations of that book, kept in secret veneration by some Zen masters, which have been proved to be fictitious by the present writer after his close examination of the contents.  See the Appendix to his Zen-gaku-hi-han-ron.

[FN#18] The following is the list of the names of the twenty-eight patriarchs: 

1.  Mahakacyapa. 2.  Ananda. 3.  Canavasu. 4.  Upagupta. 5.  Dhrtaka. 6.  Micchaka. 7.  Vasumitra. 8.  Buddhanandi. 9.  Buddhamitra. 10.  Parcva. 11.  Punyayacas. 12.  Acvaghosa. 13.  Kapimala. 14.  Nagarjuna. 15.  Kanadeva. 16.  Rahulata. 17.  Samghanandi. 18.  Samghayacas. 19.  Kumarata. 20.  Jayata. 21.  Vasubandhu. 22.  Manura. 23.  Haklanayacas. 24.  Simha. 25.  Vacasuta. 26.  Punyamitra. 27.  Prajnyatara. 28.  Bodhidharma.