佛祖歷代通載 22.4

22.4

Refutation: A falling star pierced the Pleiades—this indeed was the portent for Yu the Great. Lightning encircled the Pivotal Star—this manifested the auspicious joy of the Yellow Emperor. A rainbow swept the Flowery Isle, and Shaohao thereupon met his destined era. A star crowned the lunar orb, and Zhuanxu thereby responded to the omen. A red dragon illuminated [the sky] to herald Emperor Yao. Thick, swirling clouds were the true sign for the founding ancestor of the Han. These are the divine wonders of sages, fully recorded in genealogical documents. Yet never has it been heard that at Laozi's birth three suns rose together, that he paced nine steps all around, that lunar consorts scattered flowers, and that solar youths radiated splendor. Moreover, when stars fell like rain and the sun suffered an eclipse, the Chunqiu recorded them as strange events; if Li Er had possessed such portents, why would Confucius not have recorded them? Furthermore, Luyang waved his spear and turned back the sun (found in the Huainanzi); Duke Jing spoke good words and drove back the Planet Mars (in Liu Xiang's Xinshu); General Ershi drew his sword and a spring gushed forth (in the Hanshu); and Geng Gong bowed to a well and water welled up (in the Hou Hanshu). When there are extraordinary signs, books take them as fine accounts. Since Lao[zi] has no such texts, these matters are surely fabricated talk; they relied on another Great Sage and appropriated them as his wonders. Now, though sages display appearances through manifold paths, their birth through transformation is never divided into two bodies. The Bhagavān's hundred kotis of transformation bodies were manifested simultaneously across the trichiliocosm; once his transformative ties were concluded, he immediately entered nirvāṇa. Why would Laozi descend and be born generation after generation with such gross absurdity? He was originally Li Er, yet they falsely altered his posthumous name Li Boyang and called him Guangming, concealing his original name and adding fine titles. The genuine text of the Shiji does not record a single word of this, whereas Daoist books fabricate false accounts with a hundred kinds of embellishments. The first two transformations are described as being before the Great Change, while the latter ten cycles are recorded as being after Fuxi. They seek after vacuity and pick up falsehoods, deceiving later generations. Earlier they say that at five years of age he congealed the real, and at twenty entered the Way; later they say he was born with white hair after eighty-one years [in the womb]. Their own words contradict each other—why wait for others to attack them? They do not acknowledge the reality of Laxiang in Bozhou, but falsely transmit the fictional Jade Realm of the Northern Dark. With drooping ears and disheveled hair, they absurdly claim seventy-two marks; conceived through illicit union, they flatteringly allege that he paced nine steps all around. They plucked the auspicious signs of the Śākya[muni] to serve as wonders for Lao[zi], taking this stinking weed to foul those orchids and angelicas. The Jade Realm of the Northern Dark is not recorded in the Shanhai jing; Tiangang and Li Valley are not detailed in any local registers. The Baijia pu of Wang Jian (Grand Defender Wang Jian had the Baijia pu) never mentions the name of the Jade Maiden, and the Xing shi yuan rarely speaks of the Xuanmiao clan. According to Daoist Jia Shanxiang's preface to the Gaodao zhuan, 'Boyang arose in the Ji clan's Zhou.' Since it says he arose in the Ji Zhou, Laozi was not in the Shang. One clearly knows that at the time of Yang Jia, there was originally no Li Er; only in the declining Zhou did Lao Dan first appear. (Hu Zeng said: 'The lances and halberds of the Seven Heroes were tangled as hemp; / Across the Four Seas, no one could sit at home. / Lao[zi] instead longed to live in Tianzhu, / So he took Xu Jia and crossed the flowing sands.' From this it is clear he was a man of the late Zhou.) Fleeing disorder, he entered Qin and died, being buried in Huaili; Qin Yi mourned him, cried out three times, and departed—this is good evidence! Why doubt it any further? The Shiji's basic biography says that no one knew his end. The loose talk of the Huahu jing says he 'crossed the flowing sands,' conflating the portents of the Tathāgata's birth with the vapor of Laozi crossing the pass. Cleverly though you may harmonize them, on what do your false assertions rely? According to the Dunhuang shilu, in the twenty-ninth year of King Huan of Zhou, the king visited the Xianyu Pavilion and discussed past and present with his ministers. The king asked: 'What sort of man was Lao Dan's father?' Suo Sui, the Prefect of Tianshui, replied: 'Lao Dan's father was surnamed Han, named Qian, with the courtesy name Yuanbei. He was crippled, base, and born without ears. Blind in one eye, solitary and impoverished, he begged for a living. At sixty-two he had no wife. He engaged in illicit union with Jingfu, an old swineherd bondwoman in the household of his neighbor the Yishou clan, and she became pregnant. After eighty-one years, he was born. When Laozi was born, his hair was white, hence he was called Laojun.' These were his original, true traces, yet they hide them and do not transmit them, stealing another's abilities in order to aggrandize Lao[zi]'s holiness. If one has a broken broom at home, one values it at a thousand pieces of gold—how true this saying is!