辯偽錄 2.26

2.26

Refutation: According to the 'Account of the Western Regions' of the Hou Han shu, the Sanguo zhi, the Wei shu, and the Xiyu zhi of the Sui dynasty (with sixty fascicles of illustrations and forty fascicles of treatises, making one hundred fascicles in total comprising the Xiyu zhi), all record that in the five Indias of the Western Regions there are sacred traces of the Buddha; whether on pillars or columns, the events are all inscribed, but none say that Lord Lao ever left his name. When Zhang Qian first went west, the title 'Buddha' was first transmitted. Down to the present dynasty, state envoys traveling back and forth have numbered easily a hundred, and none have seen any account of Laozi traveling west to convert anyone. When Emperor Güyük campaigned in the west all the way to the sea, wherever he arrived there were only Buddhist monks. Traveling near the northwest sea, there was a kingdom where Buddhist pagodas in the city stood as dense as a forest, and the monarch of that kingdom was entirely a Buddhist monk. Furthermore, when Wang Xuance of the Tang went on a mission to the west and reached the kingdom of Magadha, at Mount Gṛdhrakūṭa and the place where the Buddha achieved awakening, he composed stele inscriptions praising the Buddha's holy conversion, but never heard of anything concerning Lord Lao (the above inscriptions and praises appear in Wang Xuance's biography). Furthermore, when Upāsaka Zhanran accompanied Taizu on his western campaign to Khotan and the land of Khavandha, crossing the Tian Shan and traversing the Snow Mountains, he recorded the local customs in full detail, yet he too knew nothing of Laozi. At present, Prince Hulegu, the Emperor's younger brother, is stationed guarding the Western Regions, to the southwest of Samarkand and west of the Snow Mountains; envoys travel back and forth without interruption, and when personally inquired about Laozi's conversion [of the west], all say they have heard nothing of it. Thus, the divine anomalies of Laozi in Daoist books are spurious fabrications. Since they are not commonly accepted facts, how could they be worthy of trust?