法苑珠林 4.42

4.42

勅問。答云。是龍食二龍相諍。故落下如石。准此而言。何必天落即云是星。夫遙天之物非凡度量。令人難知莫若天地。俗云。天為精氣。日為陽精。星為萬物之精。儒教所安也。星有墜落乃為石矣。精若是石不可有光。性又質重。何所繫屬。一星之徑大者百里。一宿首尾相去數萬。百里之物數萬相連。闊狹從斜常不盈縮。又星與日月光色同耳。但以大小差別不同。然而日月又當石耶。石既牢密烏兔焉容。石在氣中豈能獨運。日月辰宿若皆是氣。氣體輕浮當與天合。往來環轉不得背違。其間遲疾理寧一等。何故日月五星二十八宿。各有度數移動不均。寧當氣墮忽變為石。地既滓濁。法應沈厚。鑿土得泉乃浮水上。積水之下復有何物。江河百谷從何處生。東流到海何為不溢。歸塘尾閭渠何所到。沃焦之石何氣所然。潮約去還誰所節度。天漢懸指那不散落。水性就下何故上騰。天地初開便有星宿。九州未畫。列國未分。翦疆區野。若為躔次。封建以來誰所制割。國有增減星無進退。災祥禍福就中不差。懸象之大。列星之夥。何為分野止繫中國。昴為旄頭匈奴之次。西胡東夷彫題交趾獨棄之乎。以此而求迄無了者。豈得以人事尋常抑必宇宙之外乎。

When questioned by imperial decree, he replied: 'It was food for dragons; two dragons fought over it, and so it fell down looking like a stone.' Judging by this, why must anything falling from the sky be declared a star? Indeed, matters of the distant heavens are beyond the estimation of ordinary people; there is nothing more difficult for people to understand than heaven and earth. Worldly tradition says: heaven is refined qi, the sun is the solar essence, and stars are the essence of the myriad things—this is what the Confucian teaching maintains. When stars fall, they become stones. Yet if essence were stone, it could not have light; and its nature being heavy and dense, to what would it be attached? The diameter of a single large star is a hundred li; the head and tail of a single mansion are separated by tens of thousands of li. If objects of a hundred li are linked across tens of thousands of li, their breadth, width, incline, and skew never expand or contract. Furthermore, stars are of the same light and color as the sun and moon, differing only in size; yet could the sun and moon also be stones? If stones were so dense and solid, how could the Crow and the Hare find room within them? And if stone were within qi, how could it revolve on its own? If the sun, moon, and asterisms were all qi, the body of qi being light and floating should merge with heaven; in moving back and forth in their orbital rotation, they could not diverge from it, so how could their slowness and swiftness fail to be uniform? Why is it that the sun, moon, five planets, and twenty-eight lunar mansions each have their distinct degrees and move unevenly? How could qi suddenly fall and turn into stone? Since the earth is dross and turbid, its nature ought to sink and be heavy; yet when one digs into the soil one strikes springs, so it floats upon water. Beneath the accumulated waters, what else is there? From whence do the great rivers and hundred valleys arise? Flowing eastward to the sea, why does it not overflow? Where do the Returning Pool and the Weilu drain to? What manner of qi kindles the stones of the Burning Shoal? Who regulates the retreat and return of the ocean tides? When the Heavenly River points overhead, why does it not scatter and fall? The nature of water is to seek the low; why then does it surge upward? When heaven and earth first opened, stars and constellations were already there. When the Nine Provinces had not yet been marked and the various states had not yet been divided, how were territories demarcated and assigned to the celestial paths? Who made these divisions since the beginning of feudal investiture? States have waxed and waned, but the stars do not advance or retreat; yet portents, calamities, and blessings do not err in their midst. With heavenly images so immense and the aligned stars so numerous, why should their astrological fields be tethered solely to the Central Kingdom? Mao is the Mao-tou (Banner Head), the celestial sector of the Xiongnu; are the Western Hu, Eastern Yi, tattooed tribes, and Jiaozhi alone cast aside? Seeking by such means, in the end no one understands. How could one use ordinary human affairs to constrain what must lie beyond the cosmos?