Vasumitra

Vasumitra (Vasumitra of the Chan list) is the seventh patriarch in the *Jǐngdé Chuándēng Lù* sequence, named as the disciple of Mīcaka and teacher of Buddhanandi. The Sanskrit name Vasumitra ("Friend of the Vasus") attaches to several historically attested figures in Indian Buddhism—most prominently a Sarvāstivādin abhidharma master associated with the Fourth Council under Kaniṣka and the compilation of the *Mahāvibhāṣā*—and the Chan tradition's identification of "its" Vasumitra with one or more of these figures has never been securely established^[1].

Dumoulin observes that the Chan compilers had access to lists of distinguished names from the Sarvāstivādin and Mūlasarvāstivādin traditions and integrated several of them into the twenty-eight-patriarch sequence; whether the seventh patriarch is meant to be the abhidharma Vasumitra or a different figure of the same name is not resolvable from the surviving texts^[2]. What the Chan reckoning affirms through the placement of "Vasumitra" is the connection of the Chan transmission to the prestigious northwestern scholastic milieu in which the Vibhāṣā commentaries were composed.