高僧傳 8.22

8.22

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.