twenty-eight Indian patriarchs ［天竺二十八祖・西天二十八祖・二十八祖］ ( Tenjiku-nijūhasso, Saiten-nijūhasso, or nijūhasso): Also, twenty-eight patriarchs. In the doctrine of the Zen (Chin Ch’an) school in China and Japan, the patriarchs of the Zen teaching in India who inherited and successively transmitted Shakyamuni Buddha’s enlightenment, down through Bodhidharma, the founder of the Chinese Zen school. Zen traditionally holds that the content of that transmission is a teaching that Shakyamuni Buddha communicated from “mind to mind” to Mahākāshyapa and did not expound orally. The twenty-eight are (1) Mahākāshyapa, (2) Ānanda, (3) Shānavāsa, (4) Upagupta, (5) Dhritaka, (6) Mikkaka, (7) Vasumitra, (8) Buddhananda, (9) Buddhamitra, (10) Pārshva, (11) Punyayashas, (12) Ashvaghosha, (13) Kapimala, (14) Nagārjuna, (15) Āryadeva, (16) Rāhulabhadra (also Rāhulatā or Rāhulata), (17) Samghanandi, (18) Samghayashas, (19) Kumārata, (20) Jayata, (21) Vasubandhu, (22) Manorhita, (23) Haklenayashas, (24) Āryasimha, (25) Vāsiasita, (26) Punyamitra, (27) Punyatāra, and (28) Bodhidharma. See also Zen school.