大宋僧史略 1.23

1.23

The Wuyun tu says: 'There must have been chronicles of the sacred teachings and miraculous traces of the Zhou era, as well as King Aśoka building stūpas in this land; yet because the First Emperor of Qin burned the books, these were consumed in the flames as well, so there is now nowhere to trace them.' According to records, in the time of the First Emperor, eighteen sages including the śramaṇa Śrībandhu came with sūtras to convert the people; the First Emperor did not believe them and imprisoned them. At night a divine being broke open the prison and released them. Furthermore, in the time of Emperor Cheng of the Han, when Liu Xiang collated books in the Tianlu Pavilion, he frequently came across Buddhist scriptures; and when compiling the Liexian zhuan, he included one hundred and thirty-six persons, of whom seventy-four had already seen Buddhist sūtras. Investigating through these, we know that in the Zhou and Qin eras there were already the Buddha's teachings and śramaṇas, though they had not yet flourished greatly. When it came to Yongping 7 under Emperor Ming, the second sovereign of the Later Han, because he dreamed of a golden man, he dispatched Qin Jing, Cai Yin, and Wang Zun to India to welcome the Buddha's teachings; in the Yuezhi country they met the two śramaṇas Kāśyapa Mātaṅga and Dharmaratna and entered the Eastern Xia, which is now taken as the beginning. At that time, although the Buddha-Dharma reached the Central Plains, it had not yet spread south of the Yangtze River; faith and acceptance were not widespread, and transmission and practice were not complete. When the Sun clan divided the realm and borders were closed, there was Kang Senghui, originally a man of the Kangju country, who first began converting the southern lands during the Chiwu era.