廣弘明集 11.96

11.96

According to the Mañjuśrīparinirvāṇa-sūtra, four hundred and fifty years after the Buddha's extinction, Mañjuśrī went to the Snowy Mountains and preached the twelve divisions of the canon for five hundred immortals. Having finished, he returned to his native land and entered nirvāṇa. The omen of the permanent stars was precisely of that time. According to the Western Regions chapter of the Geographical Treatise, the Snowy Mountains are the Pamir Mountains (Congling). The thirty-six countries below them had previously submitted to the Han; because the Pamir Mountains have much snow, they were called the Snowy Mountains. Where Mañjuśrī went to convert the immortals was that very place. Examining this carefully, what Liu Xiang discussed can serve as proof. Although it met with incineration during the Qin dynasty, it re-emerged with the rise of the Han. For this reason, in Jing, Yang, Wu, Shu, Fufeng, and Luoyang, wherever there were jewel stupas, divine omens manifested; this is fully recorded in various books. Based on the examination, in the third year of the Hongjia era of Emperor Cheng, the year being guimao, Liu Xiang composed the Liexian zhuan, which is clearly so. Thus we know that during the Zhou era the Buddha Dharma had long arrived. Born-blind people say that having the Buddha brings a short dynastic span; how lamentable indeed! According to the sūtras and vinaya, Śākya[muni]'s True Dharma lasts one thousand years, the Semblance Dharma lasts one thousand years, and the Final Dharma lasts ten thousand years. Within the five thousand years, practitioners among the four assemblies obtain the three clear knowledges (vidyās) and realize the four fruitions of the Way; after the Final Dharma has set in, they will still wear the kāṣāya. Collating the Zhoushu yiji, King Mu heard that there was a Buddha in the west, and thereupon rode the eight fine steeds of the Hualiu breed, journeying west to seek the Buddha and thereby ward off [calamity]. Deduced on this basis, this agrees with the aforementioned Dharma master's reply to the Koguryŏ envoy that the Buddha was born in the twenty-fourth year of King Zhao, the fifth monarch of the Zhou, the jiayin year; down to the fifth year of Wude, it makes one thousand five hundred and seventy-seven years. It is certain that by the era of King Mu, the Dharma had already traveled east; Liu Xiang's words serve as all the clearer proof. Furthermore, when Emperor Wu of Han excavated the Kunming Pool, he found black ash and asked Dongfang Shuo about it. Shuo said: 'This is not known to your servant; you may ask the barbarians of the Western Regions.' Later, when the foreign śramaṇa Dharmarakṣa (Zhu Falan) arrived, they asked him about the matter. Lan said: 'This is the residual ash of the kalpa-fire.' Since Dongfang Shuo was a broadly learned and thoroughly versed man, innate with brilliant talents, answering every query and responding to every word, how could he fail to understand? Predicting the Westerner was because Shuo had long known that the Buddha Dharma was rising and flourishing and superior men would surely arrive; hence he gave this answer. Once the Buddha passed away, Ānanda retained all with dhāraṇī without losing a single word. Kāśyapa convened one thousand arhats to recite the collection, all of them writing it on skin and paper and inscribing it on tree leaves, causing five hundred central states to uphold it together, while sixteen great kings simultaneously erected stupas. When it reached the Han era and flowed east to the two capitals, through sixteen generations of emperors, the Sanskrit original texts were translated into the correct speech of the Han, handed down continuously to the present for nearly six hundred years. Thus the sun of the Buddha shone again, beginning from the start of Yongping; scriptures and images flourished anew, bursting forth from the start of Kaihuang. The man of Wei, Zhu Shixing, the śramaṇa Wei Dao'an, and others all recorded them. In total, among Chinese and foreigners, monastics and laypeople, there were one hundred and eighty-two translators; the sūtras, vinaya, treaties, and miscellaneous records of the Great and Small Vehicles of the Tripiṭaka they translated amounted to two thousand one hundred and seventy-one works, totaling six thousand four hundred and forty-six fascicles. None failed to shed amṛta upon the realm of the four māras, or radiate the sun of wisdom into the three realms of existence, guiding those of the future and transmitting the supreme enterprise forever. In teaching people to abandon evil and practice good, the Buddha Dharma is the foremost; in benefiting the state and aiding the people, nothing can match it. You say it breaks families—whose family has it broken? You say it breaks states—whose state has it broken? A base fellow of wrong views, a hornless beast, from long ago harboring a wolf's heart, long nursing a scorpion's venom, lacking a single hair of good, yet bearing crimes high as mountains, letting evil grow without repentance and becoming only more entrenched with age! Measuring the Sacred Honoured One with the reckoning of the born-blind, how does this differ from the small quail laughing at the great Peng, or the well-frog disbelieving the boundless sea? You may be called an icchantika, a perverse seed, a sinner of the hells! Out of grief and pity, we therefore composed this treatise. Examining the seventy-two rulers, the Three Sovereigns, the Five Emperors, Kong Qiu (Confucius), and Li Er (Laozi), among the sages and worthies of the Han land, none failed to have their bones buried by the Three Springs and their corpses lying in the Nine Soils; none were like the Buddha's relics that manifest omens, emit light, cannot be burnt by fire, and cannot be crushed by anvil and hammer. Still existing today, they can be immediately tested and clarified. Relying on this single point alone, it is enough to know the divine virtue of the Buddha Dharma. Which among the sages of Cīnasthāna can be compared to him? Yet you wish to destroy and extinguish it; this matter is hard to tolerate! Damaging morals and ruining customs, diminishing the field of merit, deluding the common people, and besmirching court and country—it is truly lamentable!