'Buddhist Dharmic Elegance') or Faya was a Chinese Jin Dynasty (266–420 CE) Buddhist monk and teacher from Hejian (in modern Hebei province), best known for developing the Geyi method of explaining numbered categories of Sanskrit terms from the Buddhist canon with comparable lists from the Chinese classics.
Consequently, (Zhu Fa)ya, with Kang Falang and others, correlated the numerations of items (shishu 事數) in the sutras with non-Buddhist writings as instances of lively explication; this was called "categorizing concepts" (geyi).
One of (Zhu Fa)ya’s disciples, Tanxi, emulated his master in excelling at discourse, and was honored by Shi Xuan, heir apparent to the throne of the Latter Zhao [319–351].
[3] Tsukamoto Zenryū 塚本善隆's Japanese-language history of early Chinese Buddhism used Zhu Faya to typify the "homilist-exegete"[4] among Fotudeng's disciples.
[W]hether accurately or not, Fa-ya is credited with the invention of ko i, a method of interpreting the Buddhist scriptures by appeal to alleged analogues in Chinese secular literature, specifically the I-Lao-Chuang circuit.
As indicated above, there was nothing revolutionary in this, for the Taoistically inclined Chinese who found himself receptive to Buddhism automatically assumed that the two gospels were identical.
Ko i is significant in that it is an explicit statement to the effect that textual and doctrinal difficulties are properly solved by scrutinizing Taoist analogues.