佛祖歷代通載 1.6

1.6

during the reign of our Emperor Shizu. For this reason they are placed at the very head of the work. Below this, the sexagenary cycle beginning with Tianyuan Jiazi is used to record the years of worldly rulers, and relying on the years of rulers of the times, the events of the religious teachings are recorded. He eliminated the convoluted and erroneous, preserving what could be authenticated without falsehood. Thus the rise and decline, prosperity and decay of the Buddha's way and the worldly way can be viewed together herein. Alas! The ten time-periods of past and present are never apart from the present thought; what need is there to record the arising and perishing of worldly dust-phantoms? I once saw Guishan question Yangshan, where Yangshan frequently replied with matters of profound antiquity; was this not out of sympathy for the fact that foresighted masters had gone unheard of? Furthermore, the single Saddharmapuṇḍarīka Sūtra says that across earlier and later kalpas the Ten Titles are not different, and it also says: 'Regarding that distant antiquity, it is just like the ancient days and today.' Is this book not something that truly deserves to be adopted? On the eleventh day of the sixth month of the first year of the Zhizheng era [1341], preface by Yu Ji, Daoist of the Weixiao An.