Page "Dharma transmission" Paragraph 18

Modern scholarship, however, has questioned this narrative.

Historic research reveals that this story was created around the middle of the 8th century, beginning in 731 by Shenhui, a successor to Huineng, to win influence at the Imperial Court.

He claimed Huineng to be the successor of Hongren's, instead of the then publicly recognized successor Shenxiu.

In 745 Shen-hui was invited to take up residence in the Ho-tse temple in Lo-yang.

In 753 he fell out of grace, and had to leave the capital to go into exile.

The most prominent of the successors of his lineage was Guifeng Zongmi According to Tsung-mi, Shen-hui's approach was officially sanctioned in 796, when " an imperial commission determined that the Southern line of Ch ' an represented the orthodox transmission and established Shen-hui as the seventh patriarch, placing an inscription to that effect in the shen-lung temple ".