傳法正宗定祖圖 1.78

1.78

Regarding Jianna, it is unknown from which country in the Western Regions he came; nor is it clear when he reached China. During the Tianbao era of the Tang, he met with Li Chang, the governor of Henan. Chang asked: "How many patriarchs of the Chan lineage are there in India?" Jianna said: "From Mahākāśyapa directly down to Prajñātāra, there are twenty-seven patriarchs in all (not speaking of Bodhidharma because he was the first patriarch of this land; if spoken of in terms of the Western Lands as a whole, then there are twenty-eight patriarchs). If one recounts the collateral branch of the Venerable Siṃha—the four generations and twenty-two people of Dharmatā—there are forty-nine patriarchs in all. If one goes from the Seven Buddhas down to the Great Master [Seng]can of this land (at that time they were holding a vegetarian feast celebrating the relics of the third patriarch, Master Can), not including the collateral branches, there are thirty-one generations in all." Chang also asked other monks: "I have seen patriarchal charts that cite more than fifty patriarchs, arriving at differing branch schools and indeterminate lineages, or merely having empty names. Why is this so?" At that time, a disciple of the sixth patriarch, Chan Master Zhiben, replied: "This was because during the Later Wei the Buddhist Dharma was destroyed and abolished. At that time, there was a monk named Tanyao who, in the haste of the moment, simply recorded the names of the various patriarchs, having no leisure to write them out fully. Keeping it in his bosom, he fled into the mountain valleys. More than thirty years later, during the reign of his sovereign Emperor Xiaowen, Tanyao brought it out and stitched it together with various pieces of silk, making the Fufazang zhuan. The errors and loss of historical facts were brought about by Tanyao." However, when I have examined the Fufazang zhuan made by Tanyao and his cohort, its text truly resembles a simple listing; from Miccaka down to the arhat Siṃha, seven patriarchs in all are most deficient, entirely lacking beginning and end. This is precisely what Li Chang referred to when he spoke of patriarchal charts that merely have empty names.