冥報記 3.3

3.3

Cui Hao, Minister over the Masses of the Later Wei, was widely learned and possessed strategic talent. He served Emperor Taiwu, who heeded his words and followed his counsel, so that the people of the state took him as a model. Hao served the Daoist Kou Qianzhi as his master and utterly disbelieved in the Buddha, constantly saying that it was a vain delusion that brought waste to the common people. Seeing his wife reading a sūtra, he snatched it and threw it into a well. Following Taiwu to Chang'an, they entered a monastery and found bows, arrows, and weapons. The emperor in anger executed the monastery's monks. Hao thereupon came forward and urged that all śramaṇas be put to death and the sūtras and images burned. An imperial edict was issued by the Palace Secretariat ordering that the four quarters follow Chang'an's precedent. Kou Qianzhi disputed this with Hao, but Hao would not heed him. Qianzhi said to Hao, 'From now on, you shall suffer execution, and your clan shall be wiped out!' Four years later, Hao was indeed exterminated along with his clan despite being innocent [of treason]. When he was about to be executed, he was carried on an open cart. The officials had ten men ride atop the cart and urinate into his mouth in turns. After traveling several li, unable to endure the agony, he wailed and begged for mercy. In the end, all five punishments were fully inflicted upon him. Since ancient times, such execution and humiliation had never occurred before. The emperor also wrongfully executed the crown prince, and was soon afterward assassinated by the eunuch Zong Ai. People of the time considered this an evident retribution for destroying the Buddha-Dharma (see the *History of the Later Wei* and *Spring and Autumn Annals of the Sixteen States*).