辯偽錄 3.2.3

3.2.3

At Miaofeng Cloister in the northern township of Yutian County, Daoist Rong of the Quanzhen completely demolished it, and at Tianjia Village built [dwellings for] Daoist Nuns Yang and Lu to reside. At the Guanyin Cloister in the city of Tongzhou, its front and rear main halls, kitchen-storerooms, and monk cells were seized by Chen Hetong of the Quanzhen, who destroyed the Guanyin [statue], remodelled it into Laozi, and renamed it Tongxian Abbey. At Lingle Monastery in Zhai Village, Wanping County, Liu the Abbey Director of the Quanzhen sold [the statue of] Prince Śākyamuni to others, cracked the stone stelae with fire, hid away the bronze bell, demolished the Buddha hall, destroyed the precious śarīra stupa, leveled the funerary grove, turned it into Tongxian Abbey, and sculpted the Three Pure Ones. At the Sheji Cloister in the city of Zhuozhou, there was a seven-story śarīra stupa over fifty feet high; Master Jia of the Quanzhen broke off the stupa spire during the night, and when questioned and rebuked by the local official, he fled; in the jiayin year, it was changed into Qixian Abbey. In the Guanyin Hall of Xingman Monastery in Zhuozhou, there was a white jade Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva, three feet high in seated posture; Chaff-meditation Ren Zhijian smashed it into a total of eleven pieces during the night, entirely occupied the monastery, turned it into Yongning Abbey, and resided there. At Guangyin Monastery, the permanent property and ancient halls were all intact; Master Liang of the Quanzhen turned it into Shifang Abbey and resided there. As for the sacred image in the main hall of Lixi Monastery in Pinggu County, Abbey Director Wang of the Quanzhen destroyed the sculpted statue, occupied and planted a chestnut orchard, ground down the stone stelae, and plowed up the land. Regarding the hall buildings, triple gates, cloud hall, storerooms, water-powered mill, orchards, and land of Shuigu Monastery in Wenjia Village, Abbey Director Wang of the Quanzhen destroyed the sculpted statues, sculpted Laozi instead, completely demolished the main hall of Dubo Monastery, and occupied and planted its chestnut orchard, turning it into a Daoist abbey. At Longquan Monastery in Nianfeng of Shunzhou, its hemp fields, jujube orchards, and other vacant plots were all occupied by Master of the Law Ma and turned into Dadao Abbey. At Beitai Monastery in Anci County, Sheepskin Li of the Quanzhen took it over as tenant; Puci Monastery was completely occupied by Daoist Nun Yang. The subordinate cloister of Taishan Monastery in Zunhua County and the chestnut orchard on Mount Lingying were occupied by Master Liu. The Luowen Valley chestnut orchard of Jingyin Cloister was occupied by Master Zhang. The main hall of Prajñā Cloister and the cloud hall of Zhongtuan Monastery northeast of Zhi County, as well as the cloud hall and triple gates of Jingjia Valley, were all demolished by Master Zhang, who built Kaiyang Abbey in their place. The chestnut orchards and land of Tianxiang Monastery in Jizhou were all taken over as tenancy by Wang Daozheng; the precious śarīra stupa, forty feet high, was demolished by Wang Daozheng, who also took the iron spire atop the stupa for his own use, and he further demolished thirteen funerary stupas. A water-powered mill belonging to a subordinate cloister of Mount Ganquan was forcibly taken and built upon by Master Sun. The subordinate cloister and chestnut orchard of Baoguo Monastery were occupied by Master Jia. The subordinate cloister, fields, and chestnut orchard on Mount Kongtong were occupied by Master Wu, who built an abbey and guarded it. How could examples such as these be fully set forth? In other circuits such as Dongping, Ji'nan, Yidu, Zhending, Henan, Guanxi, Pingyang, Taiyuan, Wushuo, Yunzhong, Baixi, Liaodong, and Feishui, the demolitions, seizures, smashing of pillars, and grinding down of stelae are more than can be told; those roughly known by name amount to more than five hundred locations. All these were directed and executed by Li Zhichang. Moreover, he took for himself tributes of round rice, fruits, preserves, tea, and ginger, racing along post-horse couriers up and down [the country] every year to fawn on the sovereign and seek glory. Not having a mind of modesty and deference, he made it his sole business to flaunt his reputation. During the renchen year, the Qa'an Emperor consoled the people at the bend of the Luo River and punished the guilty at Bianliang; occupied with military campaigns abroad, he had no leisure to attend to internal governance. Yet Zhichang, with a treacherous mind and lurking malice, sought to deceive Buddhism, held the court in contempt, and dared to commit unruly deeds. Taking advantage of the confusion while the state armies were on campaign, at a time when feathered dispatches were flying thick and fast, he indulged vulgar and despicable followers to fabricate groundless scriptures. Now Hu Zhang first compiled the fraudulent accounts, histories, treatises, and sutras, and further expanded the perverse writings, unable to distinguish beans from wheat, confounding past and present. Borrowing the deceptive claims of Wang Fu and taking up the vulgar talk of the Western Ascension, imitating the eighty-two niches of Buddhism to concoct the eighty-one conversions of Laozi, so as to match the number of nine times nine, they trumpeted the style of the two-scroll work [Daodejing]. Thereupon they asserted that Li Er preceded the formless void, while forcing Kāśyapa [Mātanga] to descend during the reign of King Zhuang of Zhou. Relying on and stealing from the Buddhist teachings, they augmented and elaborated on many points. Wishing to place him above Śākyamuni, they claimed that Li Er was born in the year of Yang Jia; wishing to surpass the Confucians, they instituted nine years preceding the Great Change (Taiyi); wishing to parallel the Five Tathāgatas of the Buddhist tradition, they spoke of the five quarters setting forth teachings to save people; intending to steal the Buddhist scriptural account of the world first forming with the wind-wheel spread below, they said that the vapors darted to and fro and transformed into the vapor of Miluo. Matters such as these are difficult to recount one by one. They only wished to mix their muddy flow into that clear Ji River, mingling brass with gold, making it hard to distinguish the Jing from the Wei. Slandering the sage and deceiving the worthy, they hoodwinked the world, blinding the correct eye of others and darkening their own minds. They stifled the gate of Buddhism and cast the correct path into the ravine, flouting the legal codes and having no fear of the state regulations. They had Daoists of Qinchuan covertly carve woodblocks and distribute them, promulgating them in distant regions to avert harm to themselves. Had they not encountered an enlightened sage, how could the true be distinguished from the false? The resurgence of the Buddhadharma awaited the proper time to become manifest: if not for the right person, the Way is not walked in vain. Our Möngke Khan was exceptionally wise and discerning, truly sagacious and enlightened. His governance was concise yet strict, his perspicacity divine and martial. Practicing the excellent precedents of the ancestral founders and drawing upon the grand regulations of past eras, he followed the old statutes and did not forget to offer external protection. When first casting the national seal, he gave precedence to assisting the Buddhist tradition: all Buddhist monks were exempted from corvée and taxes. By imperial decree, he specially bestowed on State Preceptor Namo two thousand ingots of silver (amounting to two hundred thousand taels of paper currency) to cultivate merit for the Buddhist tradition. He also commanded Master Sheng'an to issue five hundred taels of gold and ten thousand taels of silver to conduct a great Buddhist rite at Haotian Monastery (completed only after seven days, feeding more than ten thousand monks). In the Daoist order, Zhichang, having completed the printing blocks for the Chart of the Eighty-One Transformations, widely distributed the copies. [Thinking,] 'If they are not distributed far and wide, how will people know the supremacy of Laozi? It is best to first present them to the court above, and then the rest will naturally bend like grass,' he sent Master Wang of Jinpo and the Daoist Wendihan to carry the copies widely and distribute them everywhere among the court's close ministers. Tulu, Qitai Buhua, and others were all given copies. At that time, Elder Fuyu of Shaolin built a monastery at Qaraqorum, and the Emperor revered him. Seeing that this copy slandered and mocked the Buddhist tradition, he sent the scholar Anzang to present it to Prince Ariq Böke to complain of its falsehoods and absurdities. The Prince opened the chart, examined its principles, and inspected the facts, finding them entirely empty; he then memorialized the Son of Heaven, setting forth in full detail their fraud and usurpation, destroying the Buddhadharma and corrupting public customs. The Son of Heaven, not yet certain of the truth or falsehood, ordered the Elder of Shaolin and the Daoist Li Zhichang to be summoned beneath the Wan'an Pavilion in the imperial palace.