Prevod

The heights of Kunlun are the crown of the earth, the Heavenly Emperor’s capital in the world below. Its outer reaches are cut off by the deep waters of the Weak River and encircled by mountains of blazing fire. Birds and beasts, plants and trees live upon these mountains, all breeding and flourishing amid the flames. Thus there is such a thing as “fire-washed cloth”: it is made either from the bark and fibers of the plants and trees there, or from the plumage and fur of their birds and beasts. During the Han dynasty, the Western Regions presented this cloth as tribute, but for a long time afterward none arrived. By the beginning of the Wei dynasty, people doubted that it existed. Emperor Wen held that fire was fierce and destructive by nature, with no power to sustain life. He set this view down in his Discourses on the Classics, declaring such accounts impossible and seeking to put them beyond the credence of the learned. When Emperor Ming came to the throne, he issued an edict to the Three Excellencies: “The late emperor’s Discourses on the Classics contains imperishable maxims. Let it be inscribed on stone outside the gates of the ancestral temple and at the Imperial Academy, alongside the Stone Classics, to instruct all generations to come.” Then an envoy from the Western Regions presented a Buddhist robe made of “fire-washed cloth.” The passage was thereupon chiseled away, and the whole realm laughed.