By piecing together seven manuscripts from Dunhuang documents,an original version of The Eastward Spread of Buddhism has been reproduced.It is basically consistent in content with the Ongoing Disputes between Buddhism and Taoism by Zhi Sheng.As judged from relevant information provided by the texts,the two books could not have been written by a same author.The texts might be drawn from Fa Lin’s Origins of Taoism and Buddhism,which was forbidden because it recorded in The Dissemination of Buddhism in the Han Dynasty.However,it was included in the Tripitaka because Zhi Sheng had compiled the section on Buddhism from the Origins of Taoism and Buddhism in the name of Ongoing Disputes between Buddhism and Taoism.As for the Dunhuang version of The Eastward Spread of Buddhism,it had been circulated as a single version much earlier than the writing of Ongoing Disputes between Buddhism and Taoism.
