Xinghua Cunjiang

Xinghua Cunjiang (興化存獎, 830–888) was the recognised Dharma heir of Linji Yixuan and the figure through whom the main line of Linji transmission descends. The *Línjì Lù* itself names him as the compiler of his teacher's record, and the lamp records preserve a series of exchanges showing him both as Linji's chosen attendant and as a teacher who continued the use of the shout (*hè* 喝) and the staff after his master's death^[1].

His own community at Xinghua Temple in Weizhou (modern Henan) attracted both Linji-line students and visitors from other lineages; his Dharma heir Nanyuan Huiyong carried the line forward into the next century, and through Nanyuan → Fengxue → Shoushan it eventually branched into the Yangqi and Huanglong sub-houses that dominated Song-period Chan^[2]. Without Xinghua's faithful transmission and his work as the editor of Linji's record, the Linji house — and through it the Japanese Rinzai tradition that derives from it — would not have survived its founder's generation in the form we have it^[3].