Buddhist Books (shijia lei 釋家類)

Buddhist Books (shijia lei 釋家類) is a subcategory in traditional Chinese bibliographies and part of the category of Masters and Philosophers (zibu 子部). Compared to the Buddhist canon Tripitaka it includes only very few writings (only 13), mostly biographies, encyclopedias and literary writings by Chan Buddhists from the Song period 宋 (960-1279). The common feature of all Buddhist writings included in the reprint series Siku quanshu 四庫全書 is that they were originary written in Chinese and not translated from Sanskrit. The most important are the apologetic treatise Hongmingji 弘明集 and the Chan treatise Wudeng huiyuan 五燈會元.