佛祖統紀 35.15

35.15

The commentary states: Su You replied to King Zhao; Hu Duo replied to King Mu; Confucius answered the Grand Chancellor of Shang: they all spoke of a 'Sage in the West' without explicitly calling him the Buddha. When Huo Qubing obtained the golden human statue, he also did not know it was the Buddha. The transformed man urged King Mu to make an image of Kāśyapa Buddha. You Yu, answering Duke Mu of Qin, called him the 'Spirit of the Buddha'. Śrībandhu carried Buddhist scriptures to convert the First Emperor of Qin. Liu Xiang catalogued books in the Tianlu Pavilion and saw Buddhist scriptures there. Jing Xian went on an embassy to the Yuezhi and obtained the Futu jing. These already named the Buddha, yet his teachings were not yet practiced; all occurred before Emperor Ming of the Han was moved by his dream to seek the Buddha. When the gods answered Nanshan [Daoxuan], they said that Su You, Hu Duo, and Fu Yi were all sent by the Buddha. As for the statement that Liu Xiang saw Buddhist sūtras, it is likely that when Zhang Qian went on an embassy to Daxia, and Huo Qubing obtained the golden human statue, Buddhist sūtras must have arrived along with them; it was merely that the people of the time did not practice them, and the national histories did not record them. Otherwise, those books should not have been present in the Tianlu Pavilion.