"Three Treatises." An appellation for three important /sa^stras which served as the foundational texts of a Chinese school which would be referred to by the same name--the "Three Treatise School 三论宗." These three texts are the Madhyamaka-/sa^stra （Zhong lun 中论） and the Dva^da/sanika^ya-/sa^stra （Shiermen lun 十二门论） by Na^ga^rjuna 龙树 and the S/ata-/sa^stra （Bai lun） 百论 by his disciple Aryadeva 提婆， all three of which were translated into Chinese by Kuma^raji^va 鸠摩罗什. The school made significant contributions in the area of the logic of emptiness. The Madhyamaka-/sa^stra taught the "eight negations" of neither arising nor ceasing 不生不灭 ， neither eternal nor not eternal 不常不断， neither one nor many 不一不异 and neither coming nor going 不来不出. These were used to refute all forms of attachment to concepts of existence and non-existence， and thus the meaning of "middle path" 中道 wherein all things are accepted as existent， but as lacking in self-nature. The Dva^da/sanika^ya-/sa^stra also explains the emptiness of all dharmas in twelve sections， and the S/ata-/sa^stra explains emptiness to refute the arguments of non-Buddhist philosophers.
Kuma^raji^va passed these texts on to his students Daosheng 道生， Sengzhao 僧肇， and Seng-lang. The last of these distinguished the Sanlun school from the Satyasiddhi school and can thus is sometimes regarded as its actual founder. In the 6th century the most important representatives of this school were Falang and Jizang and under them the Sanlun school experienced a major upsurge. In the 7th century it was brought to Japan by Egwan， a Korean student of Jizang. After the appearance of the Faxiang 法相 school， the Sanlun school decreased in importance.