The Spread of Buddhism

early buddhism in china: daoist reactions 239

the monk and discusses the issue. The Buddha is here the mortal but
enlightened being of Hnayna Buddhism. In the Daoist version, it
is the Taishang zhenren who, when a Daoist apparently longed for
returning to secular life, changed himself into a mortal being and
directly came down from Heaven to that man to discuss the situation
with him. The mortal Buddha is here substituted by an immortal being
capable of changing his form at will. (One may ask, however, whether
this could not have been directly in uenced by the Mahynist concept
of a transcendent Buddha capable of assuming every form suitable to
help human beings).
The third kind of modi cation made by Yang Xi are additions to
the original Buddhist text, as, for example, in section 38 which in the
Buddhist version reads:

The Buddha said: “Should a disciple venture several thousand miles

from me yet remain mindful of my precepts, he is certain to attain the

Way.”^169

In the Daoist version, this is not only uttered by the Daoist immortal
Taishang zhenren, but Yang Xi inserts the following phrases:

and if he investigates the “jade scriptures” and “treasure books”, he is

certain to become an immortal.^170

With this additional phrase Yang Xi makes perfectly clear that the
Daoist goal, namely to become an immortal, is entirely different from
the Hnaynist goal, to become an arhat who will get out of sa sra by
entering nirva or  nal extinction.
As we have seen, in order to transform the Buddhist text Forty-two
Sections of Buddhist Stras into a Daoist one, Yang Xi  rst separated the
“preface” or narrative part, which explicitly mentions the Buddha as well
as the title of the Buddhist text, from the main body of the text. Then
by a series of modi cations he removed or substituted all unequivo-
cally Buddhist aspects, and,  nally, he had several Daoist deities and
immortals directly reveal the text to himself. It thus was the gods who
bestowed upon him their corrected—which means: Daoist—version of
the text whose previous transmission by the Buddha the gods obviously
no longer considered adequate. Note that the same scheme was already
applied when the gods revealed to Yang Xi a new and revised version

(^169) Sishier zhang jing 784.724a.
(^170) Zhen gao 6.7a.