ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to articulate an understanding of the character of historical awareness in Song dynasty Chan Buddhism and to define the difference, suggested by Yanagida, between it and modern historiography. The historical, narrative structure of the text is twofold: biographical histories, themselves individually temporalized in a narrative order moving from birth through death, are placed within the overarching history of human enlightenment. The Transmission of the Lamp pictures the Chan master in constant search for an appropriate heir, someone who is seen as capable of being a 'vessel' or 'receptacle' of the Dharma. Already the social, cultural ramifications of the rethinking of both Chinese history and the practice of historiography in China in light of their encounter with Marxist and other forms of Western historical reflection have been immense. As a modern Zen historian, Yanagida Seizan stands within the first generation of practitioners to correct the defect by adopting the methods and procedures of modern, critical historiography.
