折疑論 2.74

2.74

佛既生周昭王時。法化未來此土。暨漢明帝永平十年。聲教漸始流入中區（史記。後漢明帝永平三年四月八日。夜夢金人長丈六放大光明。次日問群臣。丞相韓憲奏曰。此西方聖人也。周朝備云。千年之後。教來此土。帝悅遣蔡愔等一十八人齎勅西國。尋訪聖典。至流沙遇摩騰竺法蘭白馬馱經箱。永平十年十月到於洛陽。帝大悅重賞譯經於時方流入中國）。

Since the Buddha was born during the time of King Zhao of Zhou, his Dharma teachings had not yet reached this land. Not until the tenth year of the Yongping reign of Emperor Ming of the Han did the fame and teachings gradually begin to flow into the central region. (In the Records of the Grand Historian, on the eighth day of the fourth month in the third year of the Yongping reign of Emperor Ming of the Later Han, he dreamed at night of a golden person sixteen feet tall emitting great radiance. The next day he asked his ministers. Prime Minister Han Xian memorialized: "This is a sage of the West. In the Zhou dynasty it was fully recorded that after a thousand years, his teaching would come to this land." Pleased, the emperor dispatched Cai Yin and eighteen others carrying an imperial decree to the Western regions to seek the sacred scriptures. Reaching the Flowing Sands, they met [Kāśyapa] Mātaṅga and Dharmaratna with white horses laden with scripture cases. In the tenth month of the tenth year of Yongping, they arrived at Luoyang. The emperor was greatly pleased, rewarded them lavishly, and had scriptures translated; only then did it flow into China.)