辯偽錄 2.13

2.13

The refutation states: Now, a shooting star piercing the Pleiades was truly the auspicious omen marking Wenming [Yu the Great]; lightning encircling the Pivot Star revealed the rejoicing for Xuanyuan [the Yellow Emperor]; a rainbow streaming down to the floral islet was when Shaohao responded to his destined time; a star capping the lunar disc was the auspicious sign by which Zhuanxu answered [heaven's mandate]; a red dragon shimmering and dim foretold Emperor Yao; and dense gathering clouds truly bore witness to the Han progenitor [Gaozu]. These were the divine wonders of sages, fully detailed in genealogical records. One has never heard of Laozi at birth having three suns rise together, walking nine paces in all directions, the lunar consort scattering flowers, or the solar youth displaying brilliance. Furthermore, stars falling like rain and eclipses of the sun were recorded in the Chunqiu as extraordinary events; if Li Er had possessed verifying portents, why would Confucius not have recorded them? Moreover, when Luyang swung his spear, the sun retreated (in the Huainanzi); Duke Jing's good words turned back Mars (in Liu Xiang's Xinxu); when the Ershi General drew his sword, a spring gushed forth (in the Qian Hanshu); and when Geng Gong bowed to a well, water sprang out (in the Hou Hanshu). If there are miraculous occurrences, books make them into splendid tales. Since there are no texts for Lao[zi], this is certainly an empty claim—relying on another's Great Sage and appropriating him to make oneself marvelous. Now, although sages manifest signs through many paths, the matter of taking birth through apparitional transformation has never had a dual nature. The Bhagavān has hundreds of millions of transformation bodies, appearing simultaneously throughout the great thousandfold world, and when the conditions for conversion are finished, he enters nirvāṇa. But Laozi is born in age after age—how could it be so utterly absurd? Originally he was Li Er, yet they falsely changed his taboo name Li Boyang, calling him Guangming ('Bright Light'), concealing his original name and adding flattering titles. Not a single word of this is recorded in the authentic text of the Shiji, yet Daoist fabrications fill it out with a hundred kinds of embellishments. The first two transformations are described as being before the Great Change (Taiyi), while the later ten sequences are recorded as being after Fuxi. Searching out vanity and gathering falsehoods, they deceive and delude later generations. Earlier they said that at five years of age he congealed truth and at twenty entered the Way; later they say he was born at eighty-one with white hair. Self-contradictory in their own words, why wait for others to attack them? They reject the reality of Lixiang in Bozhou and falsely transmit the fictitious Northern Black Jade Country. With drooping ears and disheveled hair, they absurdly claim seventy-two marks; born of an illicit coupling, they flatteringly claim he walked nine paces. Plundering the portents of the Śākya[muni] to serve as the wonders of Lao[zi], they take this noxious weed to confuse those orchids and irises. The Northern Black Jade Country is not recorded in the Shanhai jing; the Tiangang and Li Valleys are nowhere detailed in geography. In Wang Jian's Hundred Families (Grand Commandant Wang Jian wrote the Baijia pu), the name of the Jade Maiden is unheard of; and in He's Xingshi yuan, families of the 'Profound and Wondrous' are rarely mentioned. According to the preface to the Gaodao zhuan by the Daoist Jia Shanxiang: 'Boyang began his traces in the Ji-Zhou.' Since he says that he began his traces in the Ji-Zhou, Laozi was therefore not in the Shang. One clearly knows that in the time of Yangjia there was originally no Li Er; only in the declining Zhou did Lao Dan first appear. (Hu Zeng said: 'The spears and halberds of the Seven Heroes were tangled like hemp; within the four seas, no one could stay at home. Lao[zi] then thought of going to India, and so took Xu Jia across the Flowing Sands.' This clearly shows he was a man of the late Zhou.) Fleeing turmoil, he entered Qin, died, and was buried at Huaili; Qin Yi mourned him with three wails and departed—this is excellent proof! Why doubt it any further? His original biography in the Shiji states that no one knows where he ended; the reckless talk of 'converting the barbarians' says he crossed the Flowing Sands. Conflating the auspicious signs of the Tathāgata's descent and birth with the vapor of Laozi crossing the pass—clever though your joining may be, what reliance is there on false tales? According to the Dunhuang shilu: In the thirty-ninth year of King Huan of Zhou, he visited the court of leisurely repose and discussed antiquity and the present with his ministers. The king said, 'What kind of man was Lao Dan's father?' Suo Sui, the Grand Administrator of Tianshui, replied, 'Lao Dan's father was named Han Qian, courtesy name Yuanbei. He was crippled, base, and born without ears; blind in one eye, he was a solitary beggar. At the age of sixty-two he had no wife, and he had an illicit coupling with an old pig-herding bondmaid named Jingfu in the household of his neighbor, Mr. Yishou. She became pregnant, and after eighty-one years gave birth. Laozi was born with white hair, and thus was called Lord Lao.' These were his original, true traces, yet they conceal and do not transmit them, stealing the abilities of another to aggrandize Lao the sage. 'A worn-out broom in one's own house is cherished like a thousand pieces of gold'—can these words be believed?