Though Kuei-Shan Ling-Yu is the founder of the Kuei Yang Sect—the earliest one of the Five Branches of Chan School—there are rare researches of Ling-Yu. People knows little about him and his order. All of these is just like a lost composite picture of the Chan history. The purpose of this study was to investigate the development of Kuei-Shan Buddhist Order and the role of its founder—master Kuei-Shan Ling-Yu in the history of Chan school. The study examined the life, the writing and the sayings of Ling-Yu and the related Chan masters with a historical literature review method. The main literature for analyzing was the biography, the inscription, and the recorded sayings in Zu tang Ji（祖堂集） and Jingde Chuandeng Lu（景德傳燈錄） of Ling-Yu. As the sayings recorded after the Southern Sung Dynasty were took for a comparison. It was discovered that Ling-Yu took the buddhist sutras and discipline seriously. He frequently quoted the classics in his writing and sayings. However, after the the Hui-Chang Persecution（會昌法難）, most buddhist writings were destroyed, and a lot of Buddhist monks and nuns were forced to secularization. So it was getting hard to appreciate and resonate Ling-Yu’s teaching. To respond the tendency, Hui-Ji—the most famous dhama hair of Ling-Yu and both the founder of the Kuei Yang Sect—placed more emphases on the circle symbolization and developed many derivative variation. The circle symbolization teachings were popular among the Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties, and became the well-known feature of the Kuei Yang Sect. In the course of development, the Kuei-Shan School initially turned into the Yang-Shan School, and finally flowed into the Lin-Ji School in the Sung Dynasty. The results of the study revealed that although the lineage of the Kuei Yang Sect was buried in oblivion in the the Sung Dynasty, but its teaching was passed on by the Lin-Ji School. And Ling-Yu played a key role in the early stage of the forming the the Five Branches of Chan School. By the study, there was much clear understanding of Ling-Yu and the Kuei-Shan Buddhist Order.
