| Part ofa series on |
| Buddhism |
|---|
 |
| Anthology of the Patriarchal Hall | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional Chinese | 祖堂集 | ||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 祖堂集 | ||||||||
| |||||||||
TheAnthology of the Patriarchal Hall (Chinese:祖堂集; pinyin:Zǔtángjí; Japanese:Sodōshū) is aChinese text compiled by two Chinese Buddhist monks in 952 during theFive Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. It is the oldest existing collection ofChanencounter dialogues, dating from about half a century before the much better-knownTransmission of the Lamp. After being lost for centuries, it was rediscovered by Japanese scholars in the 20th century at theHaeinsa temple inKorea, in a complete form with all twenty chapters. The text survived in the form of printing plates made during the 13th century, and not as a printed book. Much like other Chan Buddhist texts, it is written in the form of daily conversations between masters and students or between students themselves.
TheAnthology is particularly important for the study of thehistory of Chinese, as it contains what is believed to be a good record of what vernacular northern Chinese speech was like in the 10th century. An example of a grammatical phenomenon in the text is the use of 也yě as a marker of theperfect, showing a coalescence of the Classical Chinese particles 也yě and 矣yǐ.
.svg)