[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Indian literature](https://indike.org/pramana/in) › [Buddhist Literature](https://indike.org/pramana/in.bauddha) › [Taishō Tripiṭaka (Chinese Buddhist canon)](https://indike.org/pramana/in.bauddha.taisho) › [廣弘明集](https://indike.org/pramana/in.bauddha.taisho.2103) › 11.95 # 廣弘明集 11.95 廣弘明集 11.95 - **Language:** Classical Chinese ### [11.95](https://indike.org/pramana/in.bauddha.taisho.2103.11.95) 大唐聖朝正信君子論曰。諸佛大人。遊涅槃之妙苑。住般若之真空。不可以言象求。不可以情慮揆。形同法性壽等太虛。但應物現身如水中月。所以瞿師見三尺之貌。羅漢覩丈六之容。大滿虛空小入絲忽。隨緣應質化無常儀。尋釋迦之肇。依後漢郊祀晉魏等書及王儉史錄費長房三寶錄考挍普曜本行等經並云。佛是周時第十五主。莊王九年癸巳之歲。四月八日。乘栴檀樓閣現白象形。從兜率下降中天竺國迦毘羅城剎利王種淨飯大王第一夫人摩耶之胎。至十年甲午四月八日夜鬼宿合時。於嵐毘園波羅樹下。從摩耶夫人右脇而生。放大光明照三千世界。瑞應經云。佛星下現侍太子生。本行又云。虛空無雲自然而雨。左傳云。星隕如雨。杜氏注解云。蓋時無雲。然與佛經符合。信知佛生時也。十九出家三十成道。四十九年處世說法。至周匡王四年壬子二月十五日後夜。於拘尸城入般涅槃。自滅度已來。至大唐武德五年壬午之歲。計得一千二百二十一歲。滅後一百一十六年。東天竺國有阿育王。收佛舍利役使鬼兵。散起八萬四千寶塔。遍閻浮提。我此漢地九州之內。並有塔焉。育王起塔之時。當此周敬王二十六年丁未歲也。塔興周世。經十二王至秦始皇三十四年。焚燒典籍。育王諸塔由此淪亡。佛家經傳靡知所在。如釋道安朱士行等經錄目云。始皇之時。有外國沙門釋利防等一十八人賢者。齎持佛經來化始皇。始皇不從。乃囚防等。夜有金剛丈六人。來破獄出之。始皇驚怖稽首謝焉。問曰。雖有此說年紀莫知。以何為證。請陳其決。答曰。前漢成帝時。都水使者光祿大夫劉向傳云。向博觀史籍備覽經書。每自稱曰。余遍尋典策往往見有佛經。及著列仙傳云。吾搜檢藏書緬尋太史。創撰列仙圖。自黃帝已下六代迄到于今。得仙道者。七百餘人。向撿虛實。定得一百四十六人。又云。其七十四人。已見佛經矣。推劉向言藏書者。蓋始皇時。人間藏書也。或云。夫子宅內所藏之書。據此而論。豈非秦漢已前早有佛法流行震旦也。尋道安所載十二賢者。亦在七十之數。今列仙傳見有七十二人。 > A gentleman of right faith under the sacred dynasty of the Great Tang argues: The Buddhas, the Great Persons, wander in the wondrous park of nirvāṇa and abide in the true emptiness of prajñā. They cannot be sought through speech and forms, nor can they be measured by discursive thought. Their form is identical to the Dharma-nature, and their lifespan equals the great void; yet they manifest bodies in response to beings, like the moon in the water. Thus did the cowherd see a form three cubits tall, while the arhat beheld an appearance of sixteen feet. At their greatest, they fill the empty sky; at their smallest, they enter a minute fiber. Conforming to conditions and responding to capacities, their transformations have no fixed rule. Investigating the origin of Śākya\[muni\]: according to the Treatise on the Suburban Sacrifices of the Later Han, the histories of the Jin and Wei, Wang Jian's catalogue of history, and Fei Changfang's Sanbao lu, collated with such sūtras as the Puyang jing and the Benxing jing, all say that the Buddha was \[born under\] the fifteenth monarch of the Zhou, King Zhuang, in the ninth year, the guisi year (688 BCE), on the eighth day of the fourth month. Riding a sandalwood pavilion and manifesting the form of a white elephant, he descended from Tuṣita to the city of Kapilavastu in Central India, into the womb of Queen Māyā, the principal consort of the great kṣatriya king Śuddhodana. Arriving at the tenth year, the jiawu year, on the eighth day of the fourth month at night, when the Ghost asterism conjoined, he was born from Lady Māyā's right side beneath a tree in the Lumbinī park. He emitted a great radiance illuminating the three-thousandfold world. The Ruiying jing says: 'The Buddha star appeared below, attending the prince's birth.' The Benxing jing also says: 'The sky was cloudless, yet rain naturally fell.' The Zuo zhuan says: 'Stars fell like rain.' Master Du's commentary notes: 'At that time there were probably no clouds.' Thus it tallies with the Buddhist sūtras, proving that it was indeed the time of the Buddha's birth. At nineteen he went forth from household life; at thirty he realized the Way. For forty-nine years he remained in the world preaching the Dharma. In the fourth year of King Kuang of Zhou, the renzi year, on the fifteenth day of the second month, in the latter part of the night, he entered parinirvāṇa in the city of Kuśinagara. From his parinirvāṇa down to the fifth year of Wude of the Great Tang, the renwu year (622 CE), it has been calculated as one thousand two hundred and twenty-one years. One hundred and sixteen years after his extinction, King Aśoka arose in Eastern India. Collecting the Buddha's relics and dispatching spirit troops, he broadly erected eighty-four thousand jewel stupas throughout Jambudvīpa. Here within the nine provinces of our Han land, there were also stupas. When King Aśoka erected the stupas, it corresponded to the twenty-sixth year of King Jing of Zhou, the dingwei year. The stupas arose in the Zhou era and passed through twelve kings until the thirty-fourth year of the First Emperor of Qin, when the canonical records were burnt, and King Aśoka's stupas were thereby submerged and lost. Where the Buddhist scriptures were transmitted became unknown. As the scripture catalogues of Shi Dao'an, Zhu Shixing, and others say, during the time of the First Emperor, eighteen worthy foreign śramaṇas including Shi Lifang and others brought Buddhist scriptures to convert the First Emperor. The First Emperor did not comply and imprisoned Lifang and his companions. At night, a sixteen-foot Vajra man came, smashed the prison, and brought them out. The First Emperor was terrified, prostrated, and apologized. A question asks: 'Although there is this account, the date is unknown. What serves as proof? Please set forth the resolution.' The answer states: 'In the time of Emperor Cheng of the Former Han, the biography of Liu Xiang, Director of Waterways and Grand Master of the Palace, says: Liu Xiang widely surveyed historical records and thoroughly inspected scriptures and books. He often said of himself: "I have surveyed the records everywhere and have frequently seen Buddhist scriptures." And when writing the Liexian zhuan, he said: "I searched through the stored books and sought back into the Grand Astrologer's records, creating the illustrations of the immortals. From the Yellow Emperor down through six dynasties to the present, those who attained the Way of Immortality were over seven hundred people. I examined the true and the false and determined one hundred and forty-six people." He also said: "Seventy-four of them had already appeared in the Buddhist scriptures." Deducing Liu Xiang's mention of "stored books," these were presumably books hidden among the people during the First Emperor's time, or it is said they were the books stored inside the Master's (Confucius's) residence. Judging from this, is it not evident that before the Qin and Han, the Buddha Dharma was already circulating in Cīnasthāna? Searching into the twelve worthies recorded by Dao'an, they are also among the number of the seventy. The Liexian zhuan today still preserves seventy-two of them.' > — English (machine translation) (machine translation) - [Previous: 11.94](https://indike.org/pramana/in.bauddha.taisho.2103.11.94) - [Next: 11.96](https://indike.org/pramana/in.bauddha.taisho.2103.11.96) - [Up: 11](https://indike.org/pramana/in.bauddha.taisho.2103.11) ## Translations (1) - [English (machine translation)](https://indike.org/pramana/in.bauddha.taisho.2103~en-mt.11.95) — English, machine translation ## Linked texts (1) - [破邪論](https://indike.org/pramana/in.bauddha.taisho.2109.2.7) — Classical Chinese --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/in.bauddha.taisho.2103.11.95](https://indike.org/pramana/in.bauddha.taisho.2103.11.95) · Pramāṇa