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Laozi's Conversion of the Barbarians Sutra (老子化胡經)

About 老子化胡經

5,709 · about 19 min

The *Laozi's Conversion of the Barbarians Sutra* is a Chinese Buddhist apologetic text composed during the Wei, Jin, and Northern and Southern Dynasties period, traditionally attributed to the Eastern Jin Daoist Wang Fu. This sutra emerged against a historical backdrop of intensifying debates between Buddhism and Daoism. Its core narrative promotes the idea that Laozi traveled west to India, transformed into the Buddha to teach the barbarian peoples, and thereby founded Buddhism. This claim aimed to incorporate Buddhism into the system of Laozi's teachings, thereby elevating Daoism's status in its competition with Buddhism. However, the sutra was highly controversial, repeatedly banned and destroyed by imperial authorities throughout history, and strongly refuted by Buddhist circles. Although it is not an orthodox Buddhist scripture, it holds particular historical and academic value as an important document for studying the relationship between Buddhism and Daoism and the history of religious thought in ancient China.


老子化胡經

Laozi Conversion of the Barbarians Sutra

□□□□□□□□□□□止開之則約□□□□□□□□□□之始吾欲書之非筆□□□□體之無形可擬飄乎無外或沈或□□□□□□豪翳餘止如響紀消若雲除□□□□□□捕魚比之於道不足稱無深慜□□□□□□為周柱史經九百年金身□□□□齒銀額有參午龍顏犀文耳高於頂日角月玄鼻有雙柱天中平填足蹈二五手把十文無極之際言歸崑崙化彼胡埏□□罽賓後及天竺於是遂遷文垂後世永乎弗泯。

Stopping and activating it, binding it in openness... When it begins, I wish to write it, but there is no brush... Substance without form that can be likened, drifting beyond the outermost, sometimes sinking, sometimes... A single hairtip can obscure the rest; its stillness is like the echo's trace, its dissipation like clouds vanishing... To compare fishing nets to the Way does not even begin to express its profound depth... He was the Zhou historian, living nine hundred years, with a golden body... Teeth like silver, a forehead like a mountain, with the marks of the sun and moon, a dragon's face and rhinoceros-like patterns, ears higher than the crown, sun-like horns and a moonlike brow, a nose with twin pillars, a flat and full celestial center, feet treading the pattern of two and five, hands holding the markings of ten. Beyond the limitless, he returned to Kunlun, transforming the barbarians of the Hu... Then to Jibin, and later to India, and thus moved, leaving his teachings for later generations, never to be forgotten, everlasting.


老子西昇化胡經序說

CBETA Code: T2139

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