The way The "goal" Background Chinese texts Classical Post-classical Contemporary Zen in Japan Seon in Korea Thiền in Vietnam Western Zen The Anthology of the Patriarchal Hall (Chinese: 祖堂集; pinyin: Zǔtángjí; Japanese: Sodōshū) is a Chinese text compiled by two Chinese Buddhist monks in 952 during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period.
It is the oldest existing collection of Chan encounter dialogues, dating from about half a century before the much better-known Transmission of the Lamp.
After being lost for centuries, it was rediscovered by Japanese scholars in the 20th century at the Haeinsa temple in Korea, in a complete form with all twenty chapters.
The Anthology is particularly important for the study of the history 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 the perfect, showing a coalescence of the Classical Chinese particles 也 yě and 矣 yǐ.