高僧傳 8.22

8.22

釋玄暢，姓趙，河西金城人。少時家門為胡虜所滅，禍將及暢，虜帥見暢而止之曰：「此兒目光外射，非凡童也。」遂獲免，仍往涼州出家。本名慧智，後遇玄高，事為弟子。高每奇之，事必共議，因改名玄暢，以表付囑之旨。其後虐虜剪滅佛法，害諸沙門，唯暢得走。以元嘉二十二年閏五月十七日發自平城，路由岱郡、上谷，東跨太行，路經幽、冀南轉，將至孟津。唯手把一束楊枝，一扼葱葉。虜騎追逐，將欲及之，乃以楊枝擊沙。沙起天闇，人馬不能得前。有頃沙息，騎已復至，於是投身河中，唯以葱葉內鼻孔中通氣度水，以八月一日達于揚州。

Shi Xuanchang, surnamed Zhao, was a native of Jincheng in Hexi. When he was young, his family clan was annihilated by the northern barbarians. The calamity was about to reach Chang, but the barbarian commander saw Chang and stopped [his men], saying: "The gaze of this boy's eyes shoots outward; he is no ordinary child." He was thereupon spared, and subsequently went to Liangzhou to receive pravrajyā. His original name was Huizhi. Later he met Xuan'gao and served him as a disciple. Gao always marvelled at him, and whenever he had affairs he would invariably confer with him; he therefore changed his name to Xuanchang in order to express the intention of entrusting the transmission to him. Later, when the tyrannical barbarians eradicated the Buddhadharma and killed the monks, only Chang managed to escape. On the seventeenth day of the intercalary fifth month in the twenty-second year of the Yuanjia reign era, he set out from Pingcheng. His route took him through Dai Commandery and Shanggu, crossed the Taihang Mountains eastward, passed through You and Ji, and turned south, about to reach Mengjin. In his hands he held only a bundle of willow branches and a handful of scallion leaves. Barbarian cavalry pursued him and were about to overtake him, so he struck the sand with the willow branches. The sand rose and darkened the sky, so that men and horses could not advance. After a while the sand settled, and the cavalry caught up again; he then threw himself into the river, merely putting the scallion leaves into his nostrils to breathe and cross the water. On the first day of the eighth month, he reached Yangzhou.