In the Song-Yuan dynasties, Chan masters began to summarize and reinterpret koans 公案, producing literary forms such as songgu (頌古 verses praising old cases) and pingchang (評唱 critical retorts). More songgu were composed for the koan known as "Zhaozhou sees through an old woman 趙州勘婆" than any other koan, which has been continually cited, used as a retort, and reinterpreted by later generations of Chan masters. Even though the contextual dialogue was discarded, the openness to interpretation of the koan itself enabled later Chan masters and disciples to use it to create new dialogues and perspectives. This article primarily aims to investigate the dissemination of this koan, ways in which it was explained, and its reception and application by Chan masters during the Song and Yuan dynasties, in order to observe how later Chan masters entered into the semantic or spatio-temporal context of their lineage masters' koan dialogues through commentarial activities and participated in the development of the meaning of koans, thus unearthing their profound, unique, and creative interpretations of koans of the past.
