According to a Tradition, universally received among the Chinese, he was often heard to repeat these
Words: Si fang yeou ching gin, the meaning of which
is, That in the West the most Holy was to be found. They
were ignorant concerning the Person he spoke of; but
it is very certain that fixty-five Years after the Birth
of Christ, Ming ti the fifteenth Emperor of the Family of Han, equally struck with the Words of the
Philosopher, and the Image of a Man who appeared
to him in his sleep, as coming from the West, sent
two Grandees of the Empire called, Tsai tsing and
Tsin king, into those Parts, with Orders not to return till
they had found this Holy Person, whom Heaven had
given him some Knowledge of, and till they had
learn'd the Doctrine which he taught.
But the Messengers, terrified with the Dangers and
Fatigues of the Journey, stop'd in some part of the
Indies, but what Place is uncertain, where they found
the Idol of a Man called Fo, who had infected the
Indies with his monstrous Doctrine about five hundred
Years before the Birth of Confucius [that should read Christ not Confucius; Confucius and Buddha are contemporaries]: They were instructed in the Superstitions of this Country, and when
they returned to China they propagated the Idolatry.
Du Halde, Jean-Baptiste, The General History of China, 3rd ed., 4 vols., trans. Richard Brookes, London: printed for J. Watts, 1741, vol. 3, pp. 300-301.
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