高僧傳 13.43

13.43

釋曇遷，姓支，本月支人。寓居建康。篤好玄儒，遊心佛義，善談莊老，并注《十地》。又工正書，常布施題經。巧於轉讀，有無窮聲韻，梵製新奇，特拔終古。彭城王義康、范曄、王曇首，並皆遊狎。遷初止祇洹寺，後移烏依寺。及范曄被誅，門有十二喪，無敢近者。遷抽貨衣物，悉營葬送。孝武聞而歎賞，謂徐爰曰：「卿著《宋書》，勿遺此士。」王僧虔為湘州及三吳，並携共同遊。齊建元四年卒，年九十九。

Śramaṇa Tanqian, whose secular surname was Zhi, was originally a man of the Yuezhi. He lodged in Jiankang. He was deeply fond of Mysterious Learning and Confucianism while directing his mind to Buddhist doctrine; he was skilled in discussing Zhuangzi and Laozi and annotated the Daśabhūmika. He was also adept at regular script and constantly inscribed scriptures as an act of dāna. Skilled in scripture recitation, he possessed inexhaustible tonal modulations; his brahma-compositions were novel and wondrous, singularly outshining all antiquity. Prince Yikang of Pengcheng, Fan Ye, and Wang Tanshou all befriended him intimately. Tanqian initially resided at the Jetavana (Zhihuan) Temple and later moved to Wuyi Temple. When Fan Ye was executed, there were twelve corpses in his household, and none dared approach them; Tanqian sold his own robes and belongings to arrange and conduct all their funerals. When Emperor Xiaowu heard of this, he sighed in admiration and said to Xu Yuan: "When you compose the Song shu, do not omit this gentleman." When Wang Sengqian governed Xiangzhou and the Three Wu regions, he took Tanqian along with him on both occasions. Tanqian died in the fourth year of Jianyuan of the Qi [482 CE] at the age of ninety-nine.