First, what necessity was there to make Hui-nêng an unlearned rustic in contrast with the erudition and wide information ascribed to Shên-hsiu? Or was Hui-nêng really such an ignoramus as could not read any thing written? But the _Fa-pao-t‘an-ching_,[4.53] a collection of his sermons, contains passages quoted from such Sutras as the _Nirvāna_, _Vajracchedikā_, _Laṅkāvatāra_, _Saddharma-puṇḍarika_, _Vimalakīrti_, _Amitābha_, and _Bodhisattva-śīla-sutra_. Does this not evince the fact that the author was not altogether unacquainted with Mahayana literature? Probably he was not a learned scholar as compared with Shên-hsiu, but in the narratives of his life we can trace some systematic effort to make him more unlettered than he actually was. What, let me ask, do we read in this attempt at the hand of the editors? In my opinion, this emphasising of the contrast between the two most eminent disciples of the fifth patriarch was at the same time the emphasising of the real character of Zen as independent of learning and intellectuality. If Zen is, as its followers claim, a “special transmission outside the scriptural teaching,” the understanding of it must be possible even for the unlettered and unphilosophising. The greatness of Hui-nêng as Zen master is all the more enhanced. This was in all likelihood the reason why the sixth patriarch was unreasonably and sometimes even dramatically made unlettered. Secondly, why was not the patriarchal robe transferred beyond Hui-nêng? If Hung-jên advised him to keep it with him, what does the advice really imply? That the life of the possessor of the robe would be threatened, points to the fact that there was a dispute among the disciples of Hung-jên. Did they regard the robe as the symbol of patriarchal authority? But what advantages, material or spiritual, accrued from the ownership of it? Did the teaching of Bodhi-Dharma come now to be believed as the genuine transmission of the Buddha? And for that reason did the robe really cease to signify anything relative to the truth of Zen? If so, when Bodhi-Dharma first declared his special mission as teacher of Zen, was he looked upon as a heretic and persecuted accordingly? The legend that he was poisoned by his rival teachers from India seems to corroborate this. At all events, the question of the robe is deeply connected with the status of Zen teaching among the various schools of Buddhism at the time, and also with its firmer hold on the popular minds than ever before.