歷代三寶紀 11.2

11.2

Regarding the catalogues of the imperial dynasties of the Qi, Liang, and Zhou: these were masters who successively inherited and abdicated rule to one another. Xiao Daocheng, a native of Linyi, accepted the abdication from the Song and proclaimed the Qi, still keeping his capital at Jiankang. During the Jianyuan era, a wildfire in Ancheng consumed the marshes, yet a patch of grass several fathoms wide alone did not burn. When they went to look in its midst, they found a golden icon. With this numinous sign evoking response, the holy transformation flourished anew. Thus the Minister of Education and Prince Wenxuan of Jingling, Xiao Ziliang, extensively directed his aspirations to the stream of the Dharma, greatly propagating and promoting it. After seven successive rulers and twenty-three years, the throne was ceded to the Liang. Xiao Yan, a native of Lanling, accepted the abdication from the Qi and also kept his capital at Jiankang. Once the Emperor ascended the throne, he wished to unite with all living beings in realizing equal enlightenment and joining in universal knowledge; with arms folded and facing the court, he widely expounded scriptural teachings, summoned erudite scholars from far and wide, and broadly gathered extant texts, fanning the breeze of purity for the benefit of both Dharma and the secular realm. By the seventh year of Tianjian [508 CE], considering that the true and semblance [teachings] were gradually declining and faith was increasingly waning, while the Tripiṭaka was so vast that few could master it fully, he decreed that the śramaṇas Sengmin, Baochang, and others arrange the essential matters of the sūtras and vinayas by categories, entitling it Jinglü yixiang (Distinct Marks of the Sūtras and Vinayas), in a total of fifty fascicles. By the fourteenth year [515 CE], he further ordered the śramaṇa Sengshao to compile the Hualin Fodian zhongjing mulu (Catalogue of the Scriptures in the Buddha Hall of Hualin Park) in four fascicles. Still finding it incomplete, in the seventeenth year [518 CE], he further ordered the śramaṇa Baochang to revise and compile another scripture catalogue in four fascicles, to reveal the presence or absence of translations and to verify genuine and spurious scriptures, dividing it into seventeen sections with great detail. After three rulers and fifty-four years—two rulers with Jiankang as capital and one with Jiangling as capital—[the Liang] was extinguished by the Western Wei. Yuwen Jue, a Xianbei of Shuozhou and heir of the Wei Chancellor of State Tai, succeeded to the chancellorship upon Tai's death, accepted the abdication of the Western Wei, and proclaimed the Zhou, establishing his capital at Chang'an. When it reached the third ruler, Emperor Wu (Yong), from the dunzang to the zuo'e year [574–577 CE] of the Jiande era, all Buddhist stūpas built by the government and individuals over several centuries east and west of the passes were razed to the ground; holy images were melted down or scraped away, and scriptures were burned. The temples in the eight prefectures numbered over forty thousand, all of which were bestowed upon princes and dukes to serve as residences; the disciples of Śākya throughout the three regions were reduced by nearly three million, all being restored to the ranks of soldiers and commoners and returned to the household registers. Once the sun of wisdom was hidden, the multitude of beings fell back into deep darkness. Successively spanning five rulers and twenty-four years, from the first year (gengshen) of the Yongchu era of Emperor Wu of the Song [420 CE] when the abdication was received from the Eastern Jin, until the first year (xinchou) of Dading of the Zhou [581 CE] when the imperial seal was presented to the August Sui, during these one hundred and sixty-two years, among all the translations of sūtras, commentaries, treatises, biographies, and catalogues, there were fifty-one persons—Chinese and foreigners, clerics and laypeople—who together produced sūtras, vinayas, prātimokṣas, karmavācanās, upadeśas, abhidharma treatises, biographies, catalogues, and so forth, totaling one hundred and sixty-two works in one thousand three hundred and twenty-six fascicles. These are summarized together to form the chronological catalogue of the three dynasties, three capitals, and fifteen rulers.