This volume combines two important monuments of Chinese written culture - the so-called yulu, records of conversations of the greatest Chan mentors: “Lin ji lu” by Lin-ji Yi-hsuan (11th century), “the Chinese Socrates,” and “Pan Ju shi lu" Pan Yun. The monuments contain a wealth of material that allows us to judge the state of the Chan tradition at the end of the Tang era (618-907), the method and practice of Chan in general and their specific modification by these authors. Speaking about the uniqueness of the practice of Lin Chi, it is worth mentioning at least a set of unique technical techniques designed to awaken intuition (after all, only with the help of intuition, according to Chan, can the truth be comprehended), among which is a focus on shock (“shock therapy”), caused not only by physical force, but also by word. The “hostile” attitude of Chan Buddhists to the word as a means of transmitting truth, ironically, did not prevent them from being almost the only transmitters of the spoken language of the era, saturated with old idioms, common expressions, vulgarisms, the use of which was rejected by literary scholars. And therefore the Chan text is extremely difficult to translate: it is fraught with a lot of mysteries and requires numerous notes and comments. The commented translation of the monuments, made by I. S. Gurevich, is accompanied by an outline of the historical grammar of the Chinese language of the Tang era based on the material of the Chan Yulu. Contents: INTRODUCTION 5 ENTRIES CONVERSATIONS OF THE LAYMAN PAN 19Dialogues with Shi-tou 26Dialogues with Ma-tzu 21Dialogues with Yue-shan 29Dialogues with Qi-feng 31Dialogues with Dan-xia 33Dialogues with Bo-lin 38Dialogues with Pu-tzu 40Dialogues with Chang-tzu 43Dialogues with Sun-shan 44Dialogues with Ben-si 48Dialogues with Da-mei 50Dialogues with Da-yu 51Dialogues with Tse-chuan 52Dialogue with Lo-pu 54Dialogues with Shi-lin 56Dialogue with Yang-shan 58Dialogue with Gu-yin 59Dialogue of a monk with a sutra-reading [Layman] 60Dialogue with a mendicant monk 61Dialogue with a shepherd 61Dialogue with a preacher 61Three-colored “difficult-easy” 62Three gathas 63Dialogue with Ling-zhao 65Death of a Layman 65RECORDINGS OF CONVERSATIONS OF THE “WISDOM Illuminating” TEACHER CHAN LIN-JI FROM THE REGION OF ZHEN 69B going to the Hall [to preach a sermon] (§ 7-24) 11 [Group Instructions] (§ 25-90) 83 Picky Tests (§ 91-119) 154 Records of Actions (§ 120-155) 114 APPENDIX: A GRAMMAR SKETCH OF THE TAN AGE CHINESE LANGUAGE 201 BIBLIOGRAPHY 265