廣弘明集 9.50

9.50

Your servant laughs and says: The 'Wenshi pin' of the Perfected of the Southern Pole states that the thirty-six rolls of the True Script of Lingbao reside in the jade chamber of the mysterious terrace on Mount Yujing. The large characters of the True Script fill it within. Heaven and Earth drown and perish, forming and failing myriad times, yet the True Script alone remains luminous. This True Script is none other than the text of the Three Caverns. Since the Three Sovereigns are the revered spirits of the Three Caverns, they certainly cannot be later than the Three Caverns. At that time, birds and beasts did not yet exist; how then can it be called the initial writing of bird tracks prior to the Three Sovereigns? If Fuxi is taken as one of the Three Sovereigns, then according to the Huainanzi, the Yellow Emperor ordered Cangjie to observe bird tracks and create characters. This was only in the time of the Yellow Emperor; how could it be the beginning of bird writing prior to the Three Sovereigns?