Page 271 - The Encyclopedia of Taoism v1_A-L

232 THE ENCYC LOPEDIA O F TAO ISM A- L

Bianzheng lun

Essays of Disputation and Correction

This polemical work in eight chapters (T. 2IIO) was completed about 633 by
Falin 1t1>1* (572- 640), and includes commentary by the scholar-official Chen
Ziliang ~ -=f B!. (?-632). Together with Falin's Poxie lun ~:f~ ffif1i (Essay Refuting
Heresy; T. 2I09), written in 622 to refute *Fu Yi, it has long been recognized
as a datab1e source citing dozens of Taoist texts. Its account of late Six Dynas-
ties studies of the Daode jing also preserves information independently from
Taoist and secular sources. The reasons for this become clear once we consider
Falin's intellectual training at Blue Brook Mountain (Qingxi shan W ~$ ill), a
long-forgotten religious center in Hubei where adherents of Buddhism and
Taoism lived in close proximity (Barrett I99Ib). But Falin is important for more
than bibliographical reasons. His reassertion of the Buddhist case against
Taoism, first stated under the Liang dynasty, on the grounds that it was a
confection that was not even true to the Chinese classical tradition (in which
Laozi is granted a place as a philosopher) defined the limits within which the
emerging state Taoism of the Tang dynasty was tolerable to Buddhists. In
this, even though Falin was to some extent constrained by the need to refute
specific points made by polemical opponents, the Taoists Li Zhongqing '* 1~
9NP and LiuJinxi l u±ftg (see *Benji jing) , the Bianzheng lun makes explicit the
criteria by which Buddhism judged other religions (jiao tf( , "teachings"), and
so is extremely helpful in decoding all other descriptions of Taoism through
Buddhist eyes. But his blunt, ethnocentric criticisms of the nascent dynastic
attempts to link by descent the ruling family and Laozi as a more than human
figure incurred in 639 charges of having slandered the emperor. This resulted
in banishment to Sichuan, en route to which he died.
The influence of the Bianzheng lun in East Asia was considerable: hence as
early as I930 Takeuchi Yoshio produced a study of its textual variants designed
to identify the source of the edition cited in medieval Japan (Takeuchi I930,
9: 4IO-26). Despite Fa1in's punishment, and the banning of his biography, his
works were already included in the Buddhist canon in mid-Tang times, to
judge from catalogues and phonological commentaries. Some of the polemi-
cal issues raised in the Bianzheng lun, such as the controversies surrounding
the status of Laozi, were also dealt with by contemporary Buddhists such as
Jizang a ~ (549-623) in his Sanlun xuanyi .=: ffif1i K ~ (Mysterious Meaning