弘明集 11.13

11.13

Layman Zong of Jingzhou composed the Treatise on Clarifying the Buddha. It stated that Boyi described the Classic of Mountains and Seas, wherein the state of Shendu is gentle toward people and loves people. Guo Pu, who was widely learned in antiquity, noted that [Shen]du was Tianzhu, where the Futu arose (Futu means Fotu [Buddha]). Liu Xiang, in his Biographies of Immortals, mentions that seventy-four persons appear in Buddhist sūtras. Scholars have had their eyes opened by this; it did not begin only with Emperor Ming of the Han. The monk Master Cheng was benevolent and sagely. In the era of Shi Le and Shi Hu, he said to Hu: 'In the city of Linzi there is the site of an ancient temple of King A-yu. There are still images and a dew-catching basin beneath deep forests and giant trees, more than twenty zhang beneath the ground.' Hu sent messengers to excavate and seek it according to the map, and everything was obtained as he had said. (King A-yu is King Aśoka.) When Yao Lue's uncle served as the Prince of Jin, at Puban in Hedong where the elders spoke of an Aśoka Temple, he saw a light. Digging and searching, he obtained a Buddha-bone inside a silver case within a stone box. Its radiance was extraordinary, and along the road it was met and viewed at the Ba River. Monks can still see it today at Xin Monastery. Looking at it from this perspective, Buddhist activities in the lands of Qi and Jin have existed for a long time. The reason they were not recounted in the Three Commentaries is just as the histories of Gan Bao and Sun Sheng do not mention the Buddha, yet the wondrous transformation was truly manifested, burgeoning under the Jin and flourishing east of the Yangtze River.