Let’s break the three characters down one by one: The following explains the meaning of the Hua Hu Ching title. Its primary purpose was to be used as false evidence by Taoists against Buddhists. In short, the Hua Hu Ching was a hoax, written about a thousand years after Lao Tzu’s time. Buddhism then was only a somewhat distorted offshoot of Taoism.” The Taoists developed the Huahujing to support one of their favorite arguments against the Buddhists, writes Holmes Welch (1957:152), their claim that “Lao Tzu had gone to India after his westward departure from China, and had converted-or become-the Buddha. A copy of the Huahujing was discovered in the Mogao Caves near Dunhuang, and Liu Yi (1997) believes the original text dates from around the late 4th or early 5th century.Įmperors of China occasionally organized debates between Buddhists and Taoists, and granted political favor to the winners. The text is honorifically known as the Taishang lingbao Laozi huahu miaojing (太上靈寶老子化胡妙經, “The Supreme Numinous Treasure’s Sublime Classic on Laozi’s Conversion of the Barbarians”).
According to Louis Komjathy (2004:48), the Taoist Wang Fu (王浮) originally compiled the Huahujing circa 300 CE, and the extant version probably dates from the 6th century Northern Celestial Masters. Although traditionally attributed to Laozi, most scholars believe it is a forgery because there are no historical references to the text until the early 4th century CE. The Huahujing (Chinese: 化胡經/化胡经 pinyin: Huàhújīng Wade-Giles: Hua Hu Ching literally “Classic on Converting the Barbarians”) is a Taoist book. Wikipedia, due to its open nature, isn’t always right, but in the case of Hua Hu Ching, its entry back in 2009 is quite correct: Since the Chinese text for this particular oral tradition has never been shown, much less authenticated by historians, the claim is questionable at best. Thus, “translations” available to Western readers are claimed to be derived from oral tradition with completely different content. Moreover, the original text contains passages that would never be considered acceptable today. Thus, the very genesis of the book was tainted by arrogance and dishonesty. The book supposedly proved that Lao Tzu traveled to India and converted the rulers there to the Tao, which meant Buddhism was nothing more than an offshoot of Taoism. The Hua Hu Ching (written as Huahujing in the Pinyin system) is a forgery created to assert the superiority of Taoism over Buddhism. The Hua Hu Ching contains the unknown teachings of Lao Tzu at an advanced level beyond the Tao Te Ching.
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