法苑珠林 12.96

12.96

Furthermore, at the Baima Temple in Luoyang under the Han was Zhu Falan. He was a man of Central India. He himself claimed to have chanted and mastered several tens of thousands of verses of sūtras and treatises, and he served as a master to Indian scholars. At the time Cai Yin had arrived in that country, [Zhu Fa]lan made a pact with [She] Moteng to travel and convert, and so he accompanied him [towards China]. It happened that his disciples there detained and obstructed him, so [Zhu Fa]lan traveled by covert paths to arrive. Having reached Luoyang, he resided together with Moteng. In a short time, he became skilled in the Han language. The sūtras that Cai Yin had obtained in the Western Regions, he thereupon translated. These were the five texts known as the Shidi duanjie, the Fo benxing, the Sishier zhang jing, and others. Due to the movement of the capital and bandit turmoil, the original texts of four of them were lost and were not transmitted to the region south of the Yangzi. Only the Sishier zhang jing is extant today, amounting to some two thousand-odd words. That it is preserved here in the Han land makes it the beginning of all scriptures in the Han land. [Zhu Fa]lan later died in Luoyang, his springs and autumns numbering sixty-odd.