宋高僧傳 16.46

16.46

及佛泥丸，集成律藏。初唯水乳相合，一家之業無殊；後則參、辰各墟，五部之分不類。夢㲲之占徵矣，《宗輪》之論作焉。剡浮樹高，分影猶歸於月窟；阿耨池溢，下流須到於孟津。迨夫大教東傳，梵書西至。甘露本天人之食，漢土爭甞；金烏還海上之飛，東方舊識。除經已譯，問律何傳？起後漢靈帝建寧三年，初翻《義決律》。次有比丘諸禁律至，即曹魏法時三藏遊于許洛，覩魏土僧無律範，於嘉平中譯《羯磨僧祇戒》本，此乃此方戒律之始也。自爾《薩婆多律》，先化關中；《五分》、《僧祇》，風行雨施；迦葉遺部，戒本獨來；《婆麁富羅》，聞名而已。況乎《僧祇部》者，法顯齎歸，諸師判注，云是根本大眾所傳，非是百載五宗也。今著傳家疑其未可。何耶？所覽《僧祇》現本，止三十卷文，因有數疑：一、本小而末大（謂諸部文多，《僧祇》卷略）；二、中不含五部意；三、不應《大集》懸記也。或曰：「此略本傳此方，猶《法華》、《華嚴》等經，鉅萬億頌中略出一分也。《僧祇》亦爾。」

When the Buddha entered nirvāṇa, the vinaya piṭaka was compiled. At first, it was like the blending of water and milk, the heritage of a single family with no divergence; later, however, it became separated like the asterisms Shen and Chen in different quarters, and the division into five schools lacked uniformity. The omen of the dream of the fine cloth was verified, and the treatise *Samayabhedoparacanacakra* was composed. Though the Jambū tree is high, its divided shadow still returns to the lunar grotto; though Lake Anavatapta overflows, its downstream waters must reach the Mengjin crossing. When the Great Teaching spread east, Sanskrit texts arrived from the west. Sweet dew was originally the food of devas and humans, and the land of Han vied to taste it; the golden crow flew back across the seas, an old acquaintance of the eastern regions. Apart from the sūtras that had already been translated, how was the vinaya transmitted? It began in the third year of the Jianning reign era of Emperor Ling of the Later Han, when the *Yijue lü* was first translated. Next, various prohibitive vinaya texts for bhikṣus arrived: during the Cao Wei, the Tripiṭaka Master Dharmakāla traveled to Xuchang and Luoyang; seeing that the monks in the land of Wei lacked vinaya models, he translated the *Karman Mahāsāṃghika Precepts* text during the Jiaping reign era. This was the beginning of the precepts and vinaya in this land. Thenceforth, the *Sarvāstivāda-vinaya* was first propagated in the Guanzhong region; the *Mahīśāsaka-vinaya* and the *Mahāsāṃghika-vinaya* spread widely like wind and rain; of the Kāśyapīya school, only the prātimokṣa text arrived; and of the Vātsīputrīya, only the name was heard. What is more, concerning the Mahāsāṃghika text brought back by Faxian, various masters commented and determined that it was transmitted from the fundamental Mahāsāṃghika, not from the five schools that emerged after a hundred years. The present biographers doubt that this is correct. Why is this? The extant text of the *Mahāsāṃghika-vinaya* under perusal consists of only thirty fascicles, which raises several doubts: first, the root is small while the branches are large (meaning that the texts of the various derived schools are voluminous, while the fascicles of the *Mahāsāṃghika* are brief); second, it does not encompass the meanings of the five schools within it; third, it does not correspond to the advance prediction in the *Mahāsaṃnipāta-sūtra*. Some say: 'This is an abridged text transmitted to this land, just as with the *Lotus Sūtra* and *Avataṃsaka-sūtra*, where an abridged portion was selected from among hundreds of billions of verses. The *Mahāsāṃghika* is also like that.'