佛祖統紀 37.28

37.28

In the first year of the Datong reign era, the Emperor visited Tongtai Monastery and held an unrestricted assembly. Master of Precepts Yue, the Wise One, passed away. The Emperor suspended court for three days and wept for him in plain white mourning clothes. The forty-eight thousand persons who had received precepts from the master all wore hemp mourning clothes and wept as they escorted him, stupa-enshrining him to the left of Master Baozhi. An imperial decree ordered that a separate couch be set up in the Chongyun Hall for the Great Being Shanhui to lecture on the *Threefold Wisdom Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra*. The dukes and ministers were all assembled. When the Son of Heaven arrived, the crowd all stood up to welcome him, but the Great Being did not move. An imperial censor asked him the reason, and he replied: 'If the Dharma-ground moves, all dharmas are unsettled.' The Emperor praised him. The recluse Zhao Boxiu met the Vinaya Master Hongdu on Mount Lu and obtained the 'Marking Record of the Assembly of Sages,' which said: After the Buddha's parinirvāṇa, Upāli compiled the Vinaya Piṭaka. On the fifteenth day of the seventh month of that year, after the pravāraṇā was completed, he placed a dot below the character for the Vinaya Piṭaka. It was done like this year after year. After Upāli, master transmitted it to master down to Saṅghabhadra, who brought the Vinaya Piṭaka to Guangzhou. On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, year of Gengwu, the seventh year of the Yongming era of the Qi dynasty, after the pravāraṇā was completed, he placed a dot; that year a total of 975 dots had been made. Boxiu asked: 'Why was it not dotted after the seventh year of Yongming?' Du said: 'Before that, they were all men who had attained the Way, who placed the dots with their own hands. People of our sort are ordinary mortals, and can only uphold it.' Boxiu calculated from this dot-record down to the beginning of the Datong era, finding it to be 1,020 years. When compared with various records, the dates of the Bhagavat’s birth and passing are all disparate, which is simply due to differences in lineages.