華嚴經探玄記 1.97

1.97

Eighth, the translations: The śramaṇa Zhi Faling of the Eastern Jin obtained this thirty-six-thousand-verse sūtra from the kingdom of Khotan, and also invited the meditation master Buddhabhadra—a third-fruit bodhisattva of North India, here translated as Juexian ('Enlightened and Worthy'), secularly surnamed Śākya, being a descendant of King Amṛtodana, who had once travelled to Tuṣita Heaven to ask Maitreya about his doubts. On the tenth day of the third month, in the year chunhuo (wuwu), the fourteenth year of the Yixi reign of the Jin dynasty, in a specially built pure-observance Dharma hall in the Xie Sikong Monastery of Yangzhou, he translated this sūtra. At that time there was a lotus pond in front of the hall, and each day two boys dressed in blue would emerge from the pond to sprinkle, sweep, and make offerings in the hall, returning to the pond at dusk. Tradition explains this: because this sūtra had long resided in the dragon palace, the dragon king rejoiced in its propagation and personally provided this service. Later, because of this, the monastery's name was changed to Xingyan Monastery. The śramaṇas Faye, Huiyan, Huiguan, and others personally took down the translation with their brushes, while Meng Yi, the Governor of Wujun, and Chu Shudu, General of the Right Guard, acted as the dānapatis. The translation was completed on the tenth day of the sixth month of the second year of the Yuanxi reign. On the twentieth day of the twelfth month of the second year of the Yongchu reign of the Great Song dynasty, collation against the Sanskrit text was completed a second time. Within the 'Dharmadhātu Chapter', eight or nine sheets of sūtra text were missing between Queen Māyā and Bodhisattva Maitreya. Now, in the third month of the first year of the Yonglong reign of the Great Tang, the Indian Tripiṭaka Master Divākara—called Rizhao in Tang—possessed a Sanskrit recension of this chapter. Fazang personally collated it with him up to this missing text, and by imperial decree translated and supplemented it together with the śramaṇas Daocheng, Fuli, and others.