ABSTRACT
About these events [the two T’ang scholars] Wei-cheng (581-643) and Fang Hsüan-ling (578-648) were the first to write.1 Now they knew both that literature can unravel Heaven and that arms can tame the Earth. When you have arms but not literature, you do not have what it takes to defend the borders. And when you have literature but not arms, you are incapable of warding off disorder. This is what the ancient people said. Is this not true? Therefore, although weapons, on the one side, may seem dangerous, they are, on the other, the divine military means to enhance virtue. The spirit of Heaven holds the sword with both hands and even diminutive (sanjaku) men all do the same. In an age of grand peace the bows are not used; they are stored away in armouries. Now, as for the teppō and the beginning of its use, when in ancient times the southern barbarian country Ch’uan-tu-lieh-tun-na (Jpn. Sento-retton-na) paid respect to the king’s ancestors in the land of Huan-ma-ni-ya-kuo2 (Jpn. Kōma-nioku-koku), a little girl threw an orange which hit a sheep from a distance. The flying orange, miraculously, hit the eyes of the sheep and made it blind. The barbarians were greatly surprised and frightened, thinking that the flying stone had killed a living being. They constructed this weapon which also appeared at the Ming Court. On Mount Yang lived the Sheng Demon (Sheng-kuei, Jpn. Shōki). It is not known how many people were killed by this demon. At this time a man knew the wondrous art of the teppō. He closed in on the Sheng Demon and killed (taiji) it. And so forth.
