In the thirtieth chapter of the celebrated Ch'an Buddhist collection “Chingte ch'uan‐teng”alone finds a number of short texts of theg'tha (chia‐t'a)btype2composed by various Ch'an masters. Among these often highly abstruse “songs” (ke)cis included one called “Hsin‐ming”d(Mind Inscription),3which is attributed to Fa‐junge(594–657),4the First Patriarch of the early Ch'an Buddhist denomination commonly known as the Niu‐t'ou Schoolfafter the name of the mountain where the master dwelt,5Before going on to a discussion of the text and its contents let us first take a brief look at the author and his