唐護法沙門法琳別傳 3.4

3.4

The sacred emperor, with divine calculations, extends his four perceptions throughout the universe; with his imperial majesty and sagacious insight, he makes the two luminaries shine brightly across the eight directions. Yet all at once, you used the deer and horse to slander this prosperous era, and used the qilin and roebuck to satirize our wise ruler! How can this be tolerated? Who could endure it?'

The Dharma Master replied: 'Lin has heard that when the white horse turned eastward, the Tripiṭaka first arose; when the green ox departed to the west, the Two Chapters began from there. One expounds the profound and mysterious to transform the people; the other illuminates the double emptiness to save beings. This can be verified in charts and registers, clear as the palm of one's hand. Thus, the teachings proclaimed to reveal the tenets have reached this very generation. The translations of the Buddhist teachings have their eras clearly evident; the texts and histories are fully manifest, and the common people are not misled. As for the profound scriptures of the Daoists, this is not so. Only the Two Chapters of Laozi were personally expounded by Li Dan. All the other scriptures and teachings were fabricated through a mixture of worldly passions. Why is this? In the Former Han, Wang Bao fabricated the Dongxuan jing. In the Later Han, Zhang Ling fabricated the Lingbao jing as well as Daoist writings of petitions and offerings in twenty-four rolls. In the Wu, Ge Xiaoxian fabricated the Shangqing jing. In the Jin, the Daoist Wang Fu fabricated the Mingwei huahu jing. Furthermore, Bao Jing fabricated the Sanhuang jing, which was later changed into the Sanqing jing. In the Qi, the Daoist Chen Xianming fabricated the Zhen buxu jing in sixty-four rolls. In the Liang, Tao Hongjing fabricated the Daqing jing and Ritual of Petitions and Offerings in ten rolls. When Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou eradicated the two teachings, there was a former Daoist of Huazhou, Zhang Bin, who was appointed by decree as Inspector of that prefecture. The former Daoist of Chang'an, Jiao Zishun, also named Daokang, was selected and appointed Left Assistant of the Kaifu and Magistrate of Fufeng. The former Daoist Ma Yi and the Administrative Assistant of Yongzhou, Li Yun—these four persons, in the fifth year of Tianhe, at Shouzhen Monastery inside the old city of Huazhou, selected and extracted Buddhist sūtras and fabricated more than one thousand rolls of spurious Daoist scriptures. At that time, Suo Jiao, a man of Wannian County, mounted and bound them. Wherever Zhen Luan had laughed at them in his Xiaodao lun, they altered and eliminated everything. Recently, in the late years of Daye, there was Fu Huixiang, a Daoist of Wutong Abbey, who did not speak for three years; he thereupon changed the Nirvāṇa Sūtra into the Chang'an jing. At that time, under restrictive bond, he was not permitted to leave the city gate. His family saw that inside he wore yellow garments, and they seized him and handed him over to the garrison authority. The matter of his altering scriptures came to light; he was memorialized by the Minister of the Department of State Affairs Wei Wensheng and was executed outside the Jinguang Gate. Both ears and eyes witnessed this truth. Furthermore, Zhen Luan's Xiaodao lun says that Daoists falsely annotated three hundred and fifty rolls of the writings of the various philosophers to make Daoist scriptures. Moreover, checking the Xuandu Catalogue, they falsely took book titles from the Yiwen zhi and deceitfully annotated eight hundred and eighty-four rolls to make Daoist scriptures. Based on this, it is sufficient to prove their falsehood and error. Thus one knows that, generation after generation, forced interpretations and eccentric deviations have truly been numerous, and people's reckless forgeries have accumulated in profusion. Lin has also investigated: in the first year of Zhengguang of the Northern Wei, Emperor Ming summoned Jiang Bin, a Daoist of Qingtong Abbey, to debate with Śramaṇa Tanmozui of Rongjue Monastery. At that time, Bin falsely cited the Kaitian jing, claiming that it was fabricated by the Celestial Master Zhang Ling. The Emperor then decreed that the Grand Commandant and Prince of Danyang Xiao Zong, the Sanqi Changshi Wen Zisheng, and others—one hundred and seventy persons—should jointly deliberate. They said: "Laozi only wrote the five thousand characters; he hid in the West amid the drifting sands, and made no further statements. In our deliberation, Jiang Bin's crime warrants punishment for deluding the masses."