This paper analyzes the kind of historical understanding presupposed in the writing of classical Chinese Ch'an Buddhist transmission narratives and places this historical understanding into comparative juxtaposition with modern Western historiographic practice. It finds that fundamental to Chinese Ch'an historical awareness are genealogical metaphors structuring historical time and meaning in terms of generations of family relations and the practices of inheritance. These metaphors link the Ch'an historian to the texts of historical study in ways that contrast with the posture of modern historians. The essay outlines four basic differences between the self-understanding presupposed in Ch'an Buddhist historical writing and that assumed in modern historical research and concludes by suggesting how contemporary historical thinking might benefit from reflection on these differences. In his Studies in the History of the Early Ch'an School,' the Zen historian, Yanagida Seizan, claims that the classic Ch'an Lamp Histories presuppose an orientation to history that differs significantly from that of the modern historians who now study them. Focusing on one such text, the classic Records of the Transmission of the Lamp,2 compiled in 1004, this paper seeks to articulate an understanding of the character of historical awareness in Sung dynasty Ch'an Buddhism and to define the difference, suggested by Yanagida, between it and modern historiography.3 Having done this, the paper will conclude with some reflections on what each historiographic tradition can learn from the other, and how historiographic understanding can be advanced in light of this learning. The initial difficulty of this task is that, although this voluminous text is thoroughly historical in character, no theory of history is explicit in the text, 1. Yanagida Seizan, Shoki zenshu shisho no kenkyu (Kyoto, 1967), 18. 2. Ching-te ch'uan-teng lu, Taisho vol. 51 (no. 2076), compiled by Tao-yuan and published in 1004. A partial English translation can be found in Chang Chung-yuan, Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism (New York, 1969). 3. John C. Maraldo's essay Is There Historical Consciousness Within Ch'an? (Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 12 [June-September, 1985], 141-172) is the first to raise questions of this kind about the Ch'an tradition. The present essay follows the course staked out by Maraldo's essay and is indebted to it in many ways. This content downloaded from 40.77.167.43 on Tue, 21 Jun 2016 05:15:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms