Awakening of Faith · 9 of 31

Lists of Patriarchs

The incorrectness of the Tibetan story, as to the conversion of Açvaghosha by Âryadeva above referred to, is further shown by a list of the Buddhist patriarchs in India appearing in various Buddhist books either translated from Sanskrit into Chinese or compiled in China from sundry sources. In every one of them Açvaghosha is placed after Parçva or Puṇyayaças

THE FO TSU T‘UNG TSAI

THE FO TSU T‘UNG CHI

THE FU FA TSANG CHUAN

BHUDDABHADRA 1

SARVASTI-VADIN

Mahâkâçyapa

Ânanda

Mahâkâçyapa

Ânanda

Madhyântika

Ânanda

Çaṇavâsa

Madhyântika

Upagupta

Çaṇavâsa

Dṛtaka

Kâtyâyana

Upagupta

Micchaka

Vasumitra

Maitreya

Vasumitra

Buddhanandi

Kṛshṇa

Kâtyâyana

Buddhânandi

Buddhamitra

Parçva

Vasumitra

Buddhamitra

Parçva

Açvaghosha

Kṛshṇa

Parçva

Puṇyayaças

Ghosha

Parçva

Puṇyayaças

Açvaghosha

Kapi

Kapimala

Kumârata

Kapimala

Nâgârjuna

Kanadeva

Kanadeva (Âryadeva)

Nâgârjuna

Deva and before both Nâgârjuna and Âryadeva, the most brilliant disciple of the former. The list on the opposite page, therefore, as noticed elsewhere, will furnish good material for fixing the time of Açvaghosha. It does not make any practical difference whether he was converted by Parçva himself or his immediate successor and disciple Puṇyayaças, because it is most probable they all were contemporaneous. The list generally gives twenty-three or twenty-eight patriarchs beginning with Mahâkâçyapa, but not deeming it necessary to give a complete list, I have cut it short at Deva.

Chieh-sung 1 refutes in his Chuan fa chang tsung lun (A Treatise on the Right Transmission of the Dharma) the authority of the Transmission of the Dharmapitaka (Fu fa tsang chuan), but he agrees with it down to the seventeenth patriarch. The principal point of his refutation is simply that Bodhidharma, the founder of the Chinese Dhyâna school, should be included in the list.

Footnotes 33:1 He was a native of Kapilavastu and came to China A D. 406. A translator of many Sanskrit works. His list belongs to the Sarvâstivâdin, though it is a little different from the succeeding one. The former contains fifty-four and the latter fifty-three patriarchs. See the Ch‘u san tsang chi chi by (Nanjo's Catalogue, No. 1476).

34:1 , a priest of the Dhyâna school who died A. D. 1071 or 1072. He wrote among other works one on the fundamental identicalness of Confucianism and Buddhism.