傳法正宗記 3.15

3.15

評曰。寶林傳燈二書。皆書天竺諸祖入滅之時。以合華夏周秦之歲甲。然周自宣王已前未始有年。又支竺相遠數萬餘里。其人化滅或有更千餘歲者。其事渺茫隔越。吾恐以重譯比校未易得其實。輒略其年數甲子。且從而存其帝代耳。唯釋迦文佛菩提達磨至乎中國六世之祖其入滅年甲。稍可以推校乃備書也。

Appraisal: The two works Baolin [zhuan] and Chuandeng [lu] both record the times when the various Indian patriarchs entered extinction, correlating them with the sexagenary calendar years of China's Zhou and Qin dynasties. However, in the Zhou before King Xuan, there was originally no recorded chronology. Moreover, China and India are separated by more than tens of thousands of li, and some of those individuals passed away more than a thousand years apart. These matters are vague, remote, and disconnected; I fear that by cross-checking through multiple translations, it is not easy to attain the truth. Thus I have summarily omitted their year numbers and sexagenary cycles, and merely preserved their imperial reigns. Only regarding the years and sexagenary dates of the passing into extinction from Śākyamuni Buddha and Bodhidharma down to the sixth-generation patriarch in China can they be somewhat deduced and verified, and thus they are fully recorded.