釋氏稽古略 3.53

3.53

In the jiayin year, the fifth year of Yonghui, the emperor issued a special decree ordaining the novice Kuiji as a fully ordained monk, to enter Da Cien Monastery and participate in translating the orthodox meaning of the scriptures. Ji was the nephew of Yuchi Jingde, Duke Zhongwu of E. He resided in Chang'an. Earlier, Dharma Master Xuanzang went to his father to seek him for renunciation. Whenever Ji looked at a commentary, he memorized it with a single glance; he also understood their meanings suddenly and was skilled in both the Mahāyāna and Hīnayāna. He received the essential tenets of Yogācāra Vijñaptimātra from Master Xuanzang and composed about a hundred treatises, being known at the time as the Master of a Hundred Treatises. By nature he was luxurious and grand; whenever he went out, he inevitably prepared three carts for scriptures, books, and fine foods, so the people of the time called him the "Three-Cart Dharma Master." In the first year of Yongchun, he entered cessation at the age of fifty-one. An edict expressed grief and mourning, and an imperial panegyric was composed for his portrait. By imperial decree, he was buried at the northern canal of Fanchuan, near the tomb of Master Xuanzang. Vinaya Master Daoxuan of Mount Zhongnan in the capital upheld the monastic discipline with exquisite rigor and moved the heavenly kitchen to make offerings to him. He often disdained Ji's ostentation of the three carts. When Ji visited the Vinaya Master, past midday the heavenly food did not arrive. After Ji took his leave, the heavenly being finally came. The Vinaya Master reproached him for being late, and the heavenly being said: "Just now a Mahāyāna bodhisattva was present here. His guard was extremely strict, so there was no way for me to enter." The Vinaya Master was greatly astonished upon hearing this. Thereupon, reverence for Ji increased far and wide. Master Ji founded the school known as Cien (from his fundamental biography).