In those days there must have been some necessity to invent such a legend for the authorisation of Zen Buddhism; for as Zen grew in strength the other schools of Buddhism already in existence grew jealous of its popular influence and attacked it as having no authorised records of its direct transmission from the founder of Buddhism, which was claimed by the devotees of Zen. This was the case especially when the latter made so light of the doctrinal teaching discussed in the Sutras and Śastras, as they thought that the ultimate authority of Zen issued out of their own direct personal experience. In this latter they were quite insistent; but they were not, nor could they be, so critical and independent as to ignore altogether the authority of historical Buddhism, and they wanted somehow to find the record that the Buddha handed Zen over to Mahākāśyapa and from Mahākāśyapa on to the twenty-eighth patriarch, Bodhi-Dharma, who became the first patriarch of Zen in China. A line of twenty-eight Indian patriarchs thus came to be established by Zen historians, while, according to other schools, there were only twenty-three or twenty-four patriarchs after the founder. When the historians had the need for the special transmission of Zen from the Buddha to Mahākāśyapa, they felt it necessary to fill up the gap between the twenty-third or twenty-fourth patriarch and Bodhi-Dharma himself, who according to them was the twenty-eighth. From the modern critical point of view, it did not matter very much whether Zen originated with Bodhi-Dharma in China or with the Buddha in India, inasmuch as Zen is true and has an enduring value. And again from the historian’s point of view which tries scientifically to ascertain the source of development resulting in Zen Buddhism, it is only important to find a logical connection between the Mahayana Doctrine of Enlightenment in India and its practical application by the Chinese to the actualities of life; and as to any special line of transmission in India before Bodhi-Dharma as was established by the Zen devotees, it is not a matter of much concern nor of great importance. But as soon as Zen is formulated into an independent system, not only with its characteristic features but with its historically ascertainable facts, it will be necessary for the historians to trace its line of transmission complete and not interrupted; for in Zen, as we shall see later, it is of the utmost importance for its followers to be duly certified or approved (_abbhanumodana_) by the master as to the genuineness or orthodox character of their realisation. Therefore, as long as Zen is the product of the Chinese soil from the Indian seed of Enlightenment as I take it, no special line of transmission need be established in India unless it is in a general logical manner such as was attempted in my previous Essays. The twenty-eight patriarchs of Zen regarded by its followers as the orthodox line of transmission are as follows: