| It should be utterly asserted that the Buddhist discipline and rule are absolutely regarded as the duration of life of Buddhism. And that the very Vinaya through which the Buddha's Teaching could last as long as possible. For thousand years, Buddhism in China seems to have enjoyed immortal position on account of both the Mahayana doctrine and especially the role played by the Vinaya in Four Parts or Si-fen-lv.DaoXuan (596-667) who was a famous Vinaya master and the founder of the Disciplinary School in China has systematically composed the Vinaya in Four Parts after comprehensively taking into consideration of all other Buddhist schools of thought. He assumed that the Vinaya in Four Parts had been quite common to Mahayana doctrine and extremely suitable to the Chinese mind. That is why in China Mahayana Buddhism, by and large, has been highly thought of, and the Vinaya in Four Parts has been obviously spread widely and continuously transmitted from generation to generation. And because DaoXuan lived in a monastery on Chung-nan Mountain, the Disciplinary School founded by him is sometimes called Nanshanzong. It is quite noteworthy that DaoXuan could establish this school firmly and successfully on the ground that he had carefully considered and widely referred to the doctrines of other Mahayana schools such as Vijnaptimatravada (Fa-xiang), Saddharmapundarika Sutra (Miaofalianhuajing) and Mahaparinirvana Sutra (Nie-p'an jing) and so forth. It is because of his comprehensive and systematic reference in compiling the Vinaya in Four Parts that studying and practising Vinaya in China as a whole have been carried out and transmitted ceaselessly, and that such a manner of studying Vinaya has primarily gone throughout the Chinese Disciplinary School.The thesis has basically studied the origin and the wide spread of Vinaya in Four Parts composed by Daoxuan, and mentioned a great contribution of the Disciplinary School in the historical course of development of Chinese Buddhism at large.
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