神僧傳 1.2

1.2

Divine monks are those whose divine transformations are manifold, and who transcend the ordinary lot of their kind. Yet all have biographies scattered throughout the scriptures and canonical records. When viewers suddenly wish to examine and seek them out, the texts of the Tripiṭaka are so vast and expansive that they cannot easily cover them entirely. For this reason, the world mostly cannot know them completely, nor can it plumb how they became divine. Therefore, in intervals of reading, I have selected and compiled their biographies into a total of nine fascicles, so that readers need not spend their effort in searching, but may take them in completely at a single glance, like entering a treasure house where all beauties are displayed at once. Thereupon I have had it carved on woodblocks to transmit it, making their traces manifest throughout heaven and earth, so that all people may know that how the divine monks were divine has proof. I therefore write this at the head of the volume to give a general account of its main purport.