釋迦氏譜 1.86

1.86

六以文字徵之。此土方言討尋無本。文字開俗肇自古皇。或鳥跡垂文。或科斗程字。或史籀制篆。或程邈造隷。六文紛其昭晰。八體煥乎斯彰。勘諸史冊難得定指。詳於顧氏之論。亦附寶公之篇。所以三蒼三雅總會說文。字本九千字源極矣。字林字統字苑桂苑。世增二萬澆流漸繁。抑惟人情無可憑據。天竺音字一准上天。天分二十八部。並尊梵王為主。所以世界初立人物俱空。梵天來下遂有情品。故梵天有生之元始。音字亦隨彼而族之。今則梵音梵文五天同軌。若凡若聖今古一同。故一音所演唯指梵言。群生各解乃隨方類。此方有述胡書胡語者。此曲指嶺北三十六蕃。實惟戎胡不參大夏。故大宛月支書語各別。不于天竺佛生之地。相去數萬無得混同。大雪山南五天之國。書語承天萬代恒定。所遵既勝明知非邊。震旦文言下方蟲鳥或出凡情。曾無典據。義非中矣。

Sixth, verifying it by script and language: The dialects of this land, when traced, have no foundation. The scripts that initiated customs began with the ancient sovereigns: either bird footprints bequeathing signs, or tadpole shapes formulating characters, or Shi Zhou creating the seal script, or Cheng Miao devising the clerical script. The six scripts are radiantly clear; the eight styles are brilliantly displayed. Yet collating the histories and annals, it is difficult to find a definite origin; scrutinizing Gu [Yewang]'s treatise, it also coincides with Master Bao's compositions. Thus the Three Cang and Three Ya are brought together in the Shuowen; the basic characters were nine thousand, reaching the limit of the source of characters. The Zilin, Zitong, Ziyuan, and Guiyuan increased in later generations by twenty thousand; as the corrupt stream grew ever more luxuriant, it was merely based on human contrivance, with nothing reliable to depend upon. The sounds and characters of India strictly conform to the heavens above. The heavens are divided into twenty-eight divisions, all honoring the Brahmā King as sovereign. Therefore, when the world was first established and humans and creatures were all empty, the Brahmā gods descended, and thereby sentient beings came to be. Thus the Brahmā gods are the primeval origin of living beings, and sounds and characters also differentiated into lineages following them. At present, Brahmā sounds and Brahmā scripts share the same standard throughout the Five Indias; whether common or sage, present or ancient, they are identical. Therefore, that which is expounded in a single voice refers solely to the Sanskrit language; that the multitude of beings each understand it is merely according to their regional categories. When people in this land describe "barbarian script" and "barbarian language," they arbitrarily point to the thirty-six barbarian kingdoms north of the mountains; these are truly the nomad barbarians, not part of Daxia. Therefore, the scripts and languages of Dayuan and the Yuezhi are distinct, and not those of India, the land of the Buddha's birth. Being tens of thousands of li apart, they must not be conflated. South of the Great Snow Mountains, in the kingdoms of the Five Indias, their script and language are inherited from heaven and remain constant for myriad generations. Since what they venerate is superior, we clearly know it is not peripheral. In Cīnasthāna (Zhendan), literary language derived from low insects and birds or arose from worldly contrivance, having never possessed authoritative scriptural basis. In principle, it is not the center.