In the 1969's issue of this journal I have written an article on the Fo-tsu-t'ung-chi(佛祖統記) by Chih-p'an(志磐), a sectarian history of the T'ien -t'ai school (天台宗) or the 'Lotus School'. Chih- p'an's work is written in the form of Annal-Biography Style, the style normally appreared in the Chinese Cheng-shih(正史)or'Standard History'. In that article I have mentioned that Chih-p'an's work imitated after the Shih-man-cheng-t'ung (釋門正統)or 'The Buddhist Orthodox', a sectarian history of the same Buddhist school by Tsung-chien(宗鑑). These two monk-historians worked for the same goal, i.e., to elevate their own school as the only 'orthodox' among all the Buddhist schools. However, Tsung-chien's work when compared with Chih-p'an's is but a poor second from the Chinese historiographical point of view. For instance, in his work Chih-p'an had written on the lives of the Buddha and the twenty-nine Lotus-patriarchs under the title of Pen- chi(本記)or 'Basic-Annals', patterning it after the secular history the rightful succession to the imperial throne, in order to give a strong impression that his own school had descended directly from the Buddha. But Tsung-chien put only the Buddha and Nagarjuna(龍樹), the two canonized founders of the Lotus School in Pen-chi, and place all the Chinese patriarchs, including Chi-i (智顗), the real founder of this school, under the title of Shih-chia(世家)or 'Hereditary House'. According to the principles of the history in Annal-Biography Style, Shih-chia is a technical term for biographies of the feudal lords and the uncrowned princes. Hence, Tsung-chien had not dared to claim the desired standing for his school, as Chih-p'an had done. Did Tsung-chien fail to have a thorough grasp of the principles of the above-mentioned style and henceforth violated them? Having intensively investigated into the matter, I found that both Tsung-chien and Chih-p'an understood that their own school is a completely Chinese-founded school without any direct linkage with the Indian Buddhist origin. Making Buddhist history a conspiracy against historical truth, Chih-p'an put the Buddha, Nagarjuna, the two canonized Western patriarchs, together with those real Chinese patriarchs of the lotus School in Pen-chi in order to acquire the desired religious standing. Tsung-chien, on the other hand, was so honest to the historical fact that he admitted that if Nagarjuna and the Buddha were 'Emperors', the Chinese patriarchs of his school could only be 'Uncrowned princes', as they were not the direct successors of those two great Buddhist sages. Tsung- chien's work revealed the historian's noble'zeal for truth', while he had failed in achieving his original goal notwithstanding.
