[Wu and Chia 2016] Wu, Jiang. "From the 'Cult of the Book' to the 'Cult of the Canon': A Neglected Tradition in Chinese Buddhism." In Spreading the Buddha's Word in East Asia: The Formation and Transformation of the Chinese Buddhist Canon, edited by Jiang Wu and Lucille Chia, 46-78. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016.
— 64-65
In 1945 Zhou Shaoliang 周紹良 was given a copy of an unknown scripture on a train, the Fo shuo dazangjing zongmu 佛說大藏經總目. The text features a "fictional" catalogue of scriptures brought back to China from India by monks, and can be traced back to the Tang dynasty (following Zhou and Fang Guangchang). It is similar to S. 3565 and P. 2987. Similar apocryphal texts circulate in China today. Wu suggests that these texts "provide a fictional list of an imagined canon for recitation and worship", and links them to what he calls the "cult of the canon" (an extension of the notion of the cult of the book). The Dunhuang texts have been transcribed by Fang Guangchang in Dunhuang Fojiao jinglu jijiao 275-290; Zhou Shaoliang described his discovery in an article entitled "De Fo shuo dazangjing mulu yinyuan ji."
Zhou describes an incident in which he was given a copy of this text, otherwise thought lost, in a printing dating from 1427, in a chance meeting on a train shortly after the end of the war. He also observes that portions of the texts are extant as S. 3565 and P. 2987. These manuscripts show that it must have already existed by the Tang dynasty. He also found a quotation from the text in Ch. 94 of Xi you ji. He adds that the Dunhuang versions provide us with a longer title, Xitian da- xiaosheng jinglülun bing zai Tang dushu mulu 西天大小乘經律論并在唐都數目錄.