歷代三寶紀 1.4

1.4

育王傳云。佛泥越後百十六年。閻浮提王名阿輸伽。出東天竺治華氏城。收佛舍利散起八萬四千寶塔。匝閻浮提。頗欲周遍天竺傳載。可得略言。真丹國城江漢左右關隴西東處處皆有。彼時當此周敬王世二十六年丁未歲也。自武王至𧹞三十九王八百八十四年。都酆及鎬洛邑。成周凡歷四處。嬴昭襄王立五十二年滅周稱秦。改鎬京為咸陽。仍即都之。至第四主始皇帝正二十六年。蕩除六國。二十七年廢罷九州。分天下為三十六郡。三十四年所有典籍悉皆焚燒。唯醫方藥術不在爇限。降此悉灰。緣是周代聖教靈跡。及阿育王造舍利塔。傳記湮絕靡知所承。又始皇時。有諸沙門釋利防等十八賢者。齎經來化。始皇弗從。遂禁利防等。夜有金剛丈六人來破獄出之。始皇驚怖稽首謝焉。四主四十九年為漢所滅。起周武王元年己卯訖秦二世敗歲甲午。其間九百三十三年。四十二主。周十六王四百五十三年。佛未出前名而不錄。起自莊王如來誕世到乎漢始方紀歷年。二十六主四百八十一載。總結以為周秦世錄。明佛乘應教被東云。

The Aśokāvadāna says: One hundred and sixteen years after the Buddha's parinirvāṇa, the king of Jambudvīpa named Aśoka arose in Eastern Tianzhu and ruled from the city of Pāṭaliputra. He collected the Buddha's relics and dispersed them to erect eighty-four thousand stūpas throughout Jambudvīpa, wishing to make them completely ubiquitous. Those recorded in the Indian accounts may be stated in brief; within Cīnasthāna, in its capitals, cities, around the Yangzi and Han rivers, and east and west of the Guanlong region, they exist everywhere. That time corresponded to the twenty-sixth year, dingwei, of the reign of King Jing of the Zhou. From King Wu to King Nan, there were thirty-nine kings over 884 years, with capitals at Feng, Hao, Luoyi, and Chengzhou, totaling four different locations. King Zhaoxiang of the Ying [clan of Qin], in his fifty-second year of reign, destroyed the Zhou and proclaimed the Qin dynasty. He renamed the Hao capital Xianyang and established his capital there. Reaching the fourth ruler, the First Emperor (Zheng), in his twenty-sixth year, he swept away and eliminated the Six States; in his twenty-seventh year, he abolished the Nine Provinces and divided the world into thirty-six commanderies; in his thirty-fourth year, all classic texts were burned, with only medical, divinatory, and agricultural arts exempt from the burning; everything else was reduced to ashes. For this reason, the sacred teachings and wondrous traces of the Zhou dynasty, as well as the relic stūpas erected by King Aśoka, were cut off from transmission, and none know what became of them. Moreover, during the time of the First Emperor, there were eighteen worthies including the śramaṇas Shi Lifang and others who brought scriptures to propagate the transformation. The First Emperor would not comply and consequently imprisoned Lifang and the others. In the night, a sixteen-foot-tall vajra-being came, broke open the prison, and released them; the First Emperor was terrified and bowed his head in apology. Across four rulers and forty-nine years, it was destroyed by the Han. Beginning with the first year of King Wu of Zhou, yimao, and ending with the year of the downfall of the Second Emperor of Qin, jiawu, during this period there were 933 years and forty-two rulers. Sixteen kings of the Zhou spanned 453 years before the Buddha's appearance, which are named but not recorded. Beginning from King Zhuang when the Tathāgata was born in the world down to the beginning of the Han, the years are recorded chronologically: twenty-six rulers across 481 years. These are gathered together as the Records of the Zhou and Qin Eras, making clear how the Buddhist vehicle responded to conditions and its teachings reached the East.