This paper tackles the question of how the symbolic figure of Bodhidharma appears in the precepts lineages of the Chinese Buddhist and Japanese Tendai 天台 schools. This question can be problematized further by considering the role the bodhisattva precepts played in the transmission of legitimacy. In current scholarship most reflections on the transmission of Chan 禪 Buddhism have focused on the transmission of meditation teaching, for obvious reasons. However, the transmission of precepts was always an important matter, even before the rise of the bodhisattva ordination during the sixth century in China. For instance, Dunhuang cave 196 represents a late ninth-century example reaffirming the importance of the transmission of vinaya.In the donors’ inscription in cave 196, a lineage from the Buddha to his immediate disciples was recorded, and the followers were classified into five divisions in accordance with their different capacities for upholding the Vinaya. It is then recorded that the Vinaya transmission to China began with the imperial translation project led by the ruler Yao Xing 姚興 (366–416) in the year 410 in the capital Chang’an 長安. This confirms that both vinaya and precept conferral lineages are criteria for the survival of transmission.
