佛祖歷代通載 9.95

9.95

(43) The narrative says: Yuwen Jue, the Martial Ancestor of the Zhou, was the heir of Tai, the Grand Chancellor of the Wei. Tai raised the King of Gaoyang to emperor and moved the capital to Chang'an, styling it Western Wei; after a total of eighteen years, he deposed the emperor and set up the Prince of Qi as emperor instead. After four years, Tai died. Jue received the abdication of the Wei, and in that same year was deposed; his younger brother Yu was set up as emperor, and after four years he died. Thereupon his younger brother Yong was set up; Yong was Emperor Wu of the Zhou. After more than ten years, at the beginning of the Jiande era, misled by the bewitching words of the Daoist Zhang Bin and others, and loathing the prophecy of the "black-robed ones," he abolished the Śākya teaching, destroying more than forty thousand monasteries and ordering all three million monks to return to lay life. After he destroyed the Qi, before long he changed the era to Xuanzheng, and died in the fifth month. Crown Prince Yun was established and called himself the Tianyuan Emperor; he died in the fifth month of the second year of the Daxiang era. Crown Prince Yan was established, and in the second month of the following year he abdicated to the Sui. The Zhou had five rulers and a total of twenty-five years before the state was abolished. Earlier, Yuwen Tai and the Grand Minister of Works Yuwen Hu both revered and honoured the Buddhadharma, and together with more than ten Tripiṭaka masters from the Western Regions, they promulgated and translated more than one hundred fascicles of sūtras, śāstras, astronomy, and the like.