破邪論 2.7

2.7

拓跋元魏十七君。合一百七十九年。爾時佛來何故年久對曰。後漢書云。光武撥亂反正。明帝致治昇平。民無百里之憂。吏無出門之役。麒麟入囿神鳳栖桐。赤雀文龜蒼烏白鹿。嘉瑞備臻兆民胥悅。垂沕滑磅𥗔之恩。布通天漏泉之澤。八方飲化萬國欽風。論衡等書並云。後漢徵祥不慚周夏。汝言有佛祚短。何故年。長奕云西域胡旦末國兵三百二十人。小苑國兵二百人。戎盧國兵三百人。渠勒國兵三百人。依耐國兵三百五十人。郁立師國兵三百三十一人。單相國兵三十五人。孤湖國兵四十五人。凡八國胡兵。合有一千八百九十一人。皆得紹其王業據其土地。自相征伐屠戮人國。況今大唐僧尼二十萬眾。共結胡法足得人心。寧可不備預之哉　對曰。檢漢書西域傳云。旦末小苑等八國。並是葱嶺已東。漢域胡國計去長安不過萬里。本非天竺佛生之地。又無僧尼在中謀反。縱彼造惡何關此僧。但奕狂鬼入心外興邪說。虛引往事假謗今賢。達者知其浪言。愚人必生異見。惑亂朝野深可痛哉　一答佛來漢地有損無益入家破家入國破國。漢明之世佛法始來者　大唐聖朝正信君子。論曰。諸佛大人出俗高士遊涅槃之妙苑。住般若之真空。不可以言像求。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。大滿虛空小入絲髮。隨緣應質化無常儀。尋釋迦之肇。基依漢東都郊祀晉魏等書及王儉史錄費長房三寶錄考校普曜本行等經。並云。佛是周時第十五主莊王他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。至十年甲午歲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。沸星下現時太子生本行經又云。虛空無雲自然而雨。左傳云。星隕如雨。杜氏注解。蓋時無雲。然與佛經符合。通儒以為佛生時也。十九出家三十成道。四十九年處世說法。利益天人度脫群品。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。至今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。並有寶塔。建塔之時。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。育王諸塔由此隱亡。佛家經傳靡知所在。如釋道安朱士行等經錄目云。始皇之時。有外國沙門釋利房等一十八賢者。齎持佛經來化始皇。始皇弗從。遂囚禁房等。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。請陳其決也。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。向檢虛實。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。一十二賢者。亦在七十之數。今列仙傳見有七十二人。案文殊師利般泥洹經云。佛滅度後。四百五十年。文殊至雪山中。為五百仙人宣說十二部經訖。還歸本土。入于涅槃。恒星之瑞即其時也。檢地理志西域傳云。雪山者。即葱嶺也。其下三十六國先來奉漢。以葱嶺多雪。故號雪山。文殊往化仙人。即其處也。詳而驗之。劉向所論。可為驗矣。雖遭秦世焚除。漢興復出。所以荊楊吳蜀扶風洛陽。有寶塔處。皆發神瑞具在眾書非徒臆說。檢成帝鴻嘉三年歲在癸卯劉向撰列仙傳明矣。故知周世佛法久來。生盲人云。有佛祚短良可悼矣。依經律云。釋迦正法千年。像法千年。末法萬年。五千年已還四眾學者得三達智證四道果。末法已去猶披袈裟。勘周書異記云。穆王聞西方有佛。遂乘驊騮八駿之馬。西行求佛。因以禳之。據此而推。同齊時上統法師答高麗使云。佛是西周第五主昭王二十四年甲寅歲生。至今武德五年。得一千五百七十七年也。信穆王之世。法已東行。劉向之言。益為明矣。又漢武鑿昆明池得黑灰。問東方朔。朔云。非臣所知。可問西域胡人。後外國沙門竺法蘭來。因以事問。蘭云。是劫燒之餘灰也。方朔既博識通人生知俊異。無問不酬。無言不答。豈容不達逆記胡人。蓋是方朔久知佛法興行勝人必降。故有斯對也。佛既去世。阿難總持。一言不失。迦葉結集。羅漢千人咸書皮紙。并題木葉。致令五百中國各共奉持。十六大王同時起塔。逮于漢世東流二京所經帝王十有六代。翻胡梵本為漢正言。相承至今垂六百祀。是以佛日再曜。起自永平之初。經像重興。發于開皇之始。魏人朱士行沙門衛道安等。並為紀錄。總其華戎道俗。合有一百八十二人。所譯經律戒論大小乘三藏雜記等。凡二千一百七十一部。總有六千四百四十六卷。莫不垂甘露於八魔之境。流慧日於三有之中。汲引將來永傳勝業。教人捨惡行善佛法最先。益國利民無能及者。汝言破家破誰家破國破何國。邪見竪子無角畜生。夙結豺心久懷蠆毒。無絲髮之善。負山岳之辜。長惡不悛老而彌篤。乃以生盲之慮忖度聖尊。何異尺鷃之笑大鵬。井蛙不信滄海。可謂闡提逆種地獄罪人。傷而憫之。故為論也。尋夫七十二君三皇五帝孔丘李老漢地聖賢。莫不葬骨三泉橫屍九壤。未有如佛舍利現瑞放光。火燒不然砧槌不碎。於今見在立試可明矣。且據此一條足知佛法之神德也。震旦諸聖孰與為儔。乃欲毀而滅之事難容忍。傷風敗俗虧損福田。誑惑生民點污朝廷。實可嘆也。

The Tuoba Yuan Wei had seventeen rulers, lasting in all 179 years. At that time, why was the dynasty long-lasting even though the Buddha had come? I answer: The Book of the Later Han states that Emperor Guangwu settled disorder and restored orthodoxy, and Emperor Ming brought about peace and prosperity. The people suffered no anxiety within a hundred li, and officials had no toil beyond their gates. Qilin entered the imperial parks, and divine phoenixes perched in the paulownias; there were red sparrows, patterned tortoises, dark birds, and white deer. Auspicious omens all arrived, and the myriad people were universally joyful. The emperor bestowed vast and boundlessly billowing grace, spreading moistening bounty that reached Heaven and welled from springs. The eight quarters imbibed his transforming influence, and the myriad states revered his wind. Works such as the Lunheng all say that the auspicious signs of the Later Han were not shameful even when compared to the Zhou and Xia. You say that where there is the Buddha, dynastic mandates are short; why then were these years long? Fu Yi says: In the Western Regions, the barbarian kingdom of Danmo had 320 soldiers; the Xiaoyuan kingdom had 200 soldiers; the Ronglu kingdom had 300 soldiers; the Qule kingdom had 300 soldiers; the Yinai kingdom had 350 soldiers; the Yulishi kingdom had 331 soldiers; the Shanxiang kingdom had 35 soldiers; and the Guhu kingdom had 45 soldiers. In all, the barbarian troops of these eight kingdoms amounted to 1,891 men. All of them managed to inherit their royal lines, occupy their lands, and wage war against one another to massacre each other's countries. How much more so now with the 200,000 monks and nuns of the Great Tang, who band together in barbarian teachings and fully win the hearts of the people—how could we not guard against them in advance? I answer: Checking the 'Treatise on the Western Regions' in the Book of the Han, it states that the eight kingdoms including Danmo and Xiaoyuan are all east of the Congling Mountains, barbarian kingdoms within Han territory, calculated to be no more than ten thousand li from Chang'an. They were originally not the land of Tianzhu where the Buddha was born. Furthermore, there were no monks and nuns plotting rebellion within them. Even if they committed evil, what does that have to do with the monks here? It is merely that a mad demon has entered Fu Yi's heart, raising heterodox doctrines outwardly, vainly citing past events and falsely slandering present worthies. The discerning know his wild talk, while the foolish will inevitably produce divergent views, bringing delusion and confusion to the court and countryside—this is profoundly lamentable! The first refutation: regarding the claim that the Buddha's coming to the Han land brought harm without benefit, ruined families where it entered families, ruined countries where it entered countries, and that the Buddha-Dharma only began to arrive in the time of Emperor Ming of the Han. A gentleman of right faith of the sacred court of the Great Tang states: The Buddhas, the Great Persons, are lofty gentlemen who transcend the secular, wandering in the wondrous park of nirvāṇa and abiding in the true emptiness of prajñā. They cannot be sought through words and images, nor measured by emotions and thoughts. Their form is identical with the Dharma-nature, and their life is equal to empty space. Yet responding to beings, they manifest bodies like the moon in the water. Therefore, Guḍa saw a three-foot appearance, while arhats beheld a sixteen-foot form. Vast, it fills empty space; minuscule, it enters a fine hair. Responding with physical forms in accordance with conditions, their transformation has no fixed standard. Investigating the origins of Śākyamuni: according to the Suburban Sacrifices of the Eastern Capital of Han, the Jin and Wei histories, Wang Jian's Catalogue of History, Fei Changfang's Record of the Three Jewels, and collating scriptures such as the Lalitavistara and the Abhiniṣkramaṇa-sūtra, all state that the Buddha was [conceived] in the time of Zhou, under the fifteenth sovereign, King Zhuang, in his ninth year, the guisi year, 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 Tianzhu, entering the womb of Queen Māyā, the principal consort of the kṣatriya royal lineage's Great King Śuddhodana. Arriving at the tenth year, the jiawu year, on the night of the eighth day of the fourth month when the Ghost constellation conjoined, beneath the plakṣa tree in the Lumbinī park, he was born from the right side of Queen Māyā, emitting a great radiance that illuminated the three-thousandfold world. The Scripture of Auspicious Responses says that when the boiling star appeared below, the Crown Prince was born; the Abhiniṣkramaṇa-sūtra also says that though the sky was cloudless, rain fell spontaneously. The Zuo zhuan says that stars fell like rain, and Du Yu's commentary explains that this was because there were no clouds at the time—which fully accords with the Buddhist sūtras. Thoroughly learned scholars consider this to be the time of the Buddha's birth. At nineteen he renounced the world, at thirty he achieved the Way, and for forty-nine years he remained in the world preaching the Dharma, benefiting gods and humans, and liberating all beings. In the fourth year of King Kuang of Zhou, the renzi year, in the latter part of the night on the fifteenth day of the second month, he entered parinirvāṇa at Kuśinagara. From his extinction until the present fifth year of Wude of the Great Tang, the renwu year, it is calculated to be 1,221 years. One hundred and sixteen years after his extinction, in eastern Tianzhu there was King Aśoka, who collected the Buddha's relics, commanded ghost soldiers, and widely erected 84,000 jewel stupas throughout Jambudvīpa. Within the nine provinces of this Han land of ours, there are also jewel stupas. The time of erecting these stupas fell in the twenty-sixth year of King Jing of Zhou, the dingwei year. The stupas arose in the Zhou era and passed through twelve kings down to the thirty-fourth year of the First Emperor of Qin. When he burned the texts, King Aśoka's various stupas were hidden and lost on account of this, and the whereabouts of Buddhist scriptures and chronicles became unknown. As the scripture catalogues of Shi Dao'an and Zhu Shixing state, in the time of the First Emperor, there were eighteen foreign śramaṇa worthies, including Shi Lifang, who brought Buddhist scriptures to convert the First Emperor. The First Emperor did not comply and ended up imprisoning Lifang and the others. At night, a sixteen-foot diamond being came, broke open the prison, and brought them out. The First Emperor was terrified and bowed his head to apologize. Question: Although there is this account, the year is not known; what can serve as proof? Please set forth the resolution. Answer: In the Western Han during the time of Emperor Cheng, the biography of the Director of Waterways and Grand Master of the Palace Liu Xiang states that Xiang widely viewed historical records and thoroughly inspected the classic scriptures. He would often state: 'Searching broadly through the classics and registers, I frequently saw Buddhist scriptures.' And when compiling the Liexian zhuan, he said: 'I searched the archived books and looked back into the Grand Historian's initial drafting of the illustrations of the immortals. From the Yellow Emperor down through six eras to the present, those who attained the Way of Immortality were over seven hundred persons.' Xiang examined their truth and falsity and definitively established 146 persons, further stating: 'Seventy-four of them have already appeared in Buddhist scriptures.' Inferring from Liu Xiang's mention of 'archived books,' these were probably books hidden among the populace during the Qin era; others say they were books hidden within Confucius's residence. Arguing from this, how could it not be that long before the Qin and Han, the Buddha-Dharma was already circulating in Cīnasthāna? Investigating what Dao'an recorded, the twelve worthies were also among the number of seventy; today the Liexian zhuan shows seventy-two persons. Examining the Scripture on the Parinirvāṇa of Mañjuśrī, it says: 'Four hundred and fifty years after the Buddha's extinction, Mañjuśrī arrived at the Snow Mountains and preached the twelve divisions of scripture for five hundred immortals; having finished, he returned to his native land and entered nirvāṇa.' The auspicious sign of the fixed stars was precisely that time. Checking the 'Treatise on Geography' and 'Treatise on the Western Regions', it says that the Snow Mountains are precisely the Congling Mountains; the thirty-six kingdoms beneath them had long submitted to the Han, and because the Congling Mountains have much snow, they were called the Snow Mountains. The place Mañjuśrī went to convert the immortals was precisely that location. Examining and verifying this, what Liu Xiang discussed can serve as proof. Although it met with destruction by fire in the Qin era, it emerged again with the rise of Han. Thus, in Jing, Yang, Wu, Shu, Fufeng, and Luoyang, the places where there are jewel stupas have all produced divine miracles; these are fully recorded in numerous books and are not mere conjecture. Checking the third year of Hongjia of Emperor Cheng, the year being guimao, Liu Xiang compiled the Liexian zhuan, which makes this clear. Hence we know that the Buddha-Dharma came long ago during the Zhou era. For a person blind from birth to say that where there is the Buddha dynasties are short is truly lamentable! According to the sūtras and vinaya, Śākyamuni's true Dharma lasts one thousand years, the semblance Dharma one thousand years, and the final Dharma ten thousand years. For the first five thousand years, learners among the four assemblies attain the three clear knowledges and realize the four fruits of the path; even after the final Dharma arrives, they still wear the kāṣāya robe. Checking the Zhoushu yiji, it says that King Mu heard there was a Buddha in the west, and thereupon rode his eight fine steeds, including the Bay, travelling west to seek the Buddha and thereby perform an exorcistic ritual. Inferring on this basis, it accords with Master Shangtong of the Qi responding to the envoy from Goguryeo: 'The Buddha was born in the twenty-fourth year of King Zhao, the fifth sovereign of the Western Zhou, the jiayin year; down to the present fifth year of Wude, it has been 1,577 years.' Truly, by the time of King Mu, the Dharma had already traveled eastward; Liu Xiang's words are made all the clearer. Furthermore, when Emperor Wu of Han excavated the Kunming Lake and found black ashes, he asked Dongfang Shuo. Shuo said: 'This is not known to your subject; you may ask the barbarian peoples of the Western Regions.' Later, when the foreign śramaṇa Dharmaratna arrived, he was asked about the matter. Ratna said: 'These are the residual ashes from the kalpa fire.' Since Dongfang Shuo was broadly knowledgeable, a man of universal learning, and born with extraordinary talent, there was no question he did not answer, no word he did not reply to; how could he have failed to understand, anticipating and noting the barbarian? It was merely that Shuo had long known that the Buddha-Dharma would flourish and an eminent person would surely arrive, hence he gave this answer. After the Buddha passed away, Ānanda held the teachings in memory, not losing a single word. Mahākāśyapa convened the council; one thousand arhats wrote them all on bark and paper, and inscribed them on tree leaves, causing five hundred Central States to revere and uphold them together, and sixteen great kings to erect stupas simultaneously. Reaching the Han era, it flowed eastward to the two capitals, spanning sixteen generations of emperors, translating barbarian and Sanskrit manuscripts into the correct language of Han, transmitted continuously down to the present for nearly six hundred years. Therefore, the sun of the Buddha shone again, starting from the beginning of Yongping; scriptures and images flourished anew, bursting forth from the start of Kaihuang. The Wei man Zhu Shixing and the śramaṇa Wei Dao'an and others all recorded them: combining both Chinese and foreigners, monks and laity, there were 182 persons in all; the translated sūtras, vinaya, precepts, treatises, Great and Small Vehicle tripiṭaka, and miscellaneous records, totaled 2,171 works in 6,446 fascicles. None failed to shower sweet dew upon the realm of the eight māras, and shed the sun of wisdom within the three realms of existence, guiding those of the future and transmitting the supreme undertaking forever. In teaching people to abandon evil and practice good, the Buddha-Dharma comes foremost; in benefiting the state and aiding the people, nothing can match it. You say it 'ruins families'—whose family has it ruined? You say it 'ruins countries'—which country has it ruined? You heterodox wretch, you hornless beast! Long harbouring a jackal's heart and perpetually nursing a scorpion's venom, you lack a hair's breadth of goodness and bear guilt heavy as mountains. Growing in evil without repenting, as you age you become all the more obstinate. To measure the Sacred Honoured One with the deliberations of one blind from birth—how is this different from the quail laughing at the roc, or the well-frog disbelieving in the vast sea? You can truly be called an icchantika, a recalcitrant breed, a sinner of the hells! Grieving and pitying you, I have therefore composed this treatise. If we examine the seventy-two rulers, the Three Sovereigns, the Five Emperors, Kong Qiu, Li Lao, and the sages and worthies of the Han land, none failed to have their bones buried by the Three Springs and their corpses lie prostrate in the Nine Earths. None had anything like the Buddha's relics, which manifest auspicious omens and emit light, do not burn in fire, and are not shattered by anvil and hammer. Being present today, this can be proven immediately by putting it to the test! Relying on this single matter alone, it is sufficient to recognize the divine virtue of the Buddha-Dharma. Who among the various sages of Cīnasthāna can be compared with him? Yet you wish to destroy and abolish it—such a deed is hard to tolerate! Damaging moral customs, ruining the field of merit, deceiving and confusing the common people, and staining the imperial court—this is truly lamentable!