法苑珠林 25.9

25.9

Third, the treatise states: The reason why Śāriputra is called foremost in wisdom is that if the World-Honoured One wished to know how much wisdom Śāriputra possessed, using Mount Sumeru as an inkstone, the water of the four great oceans as ink, the bamboos and trees of the four continents as brushes, and all the people filling the four continents as scribes to write out Śāriputra's wisdom, they still could not exhaust it. How then could ordinary persons with the five superknowledges measure it? Hence he is called foremost in wisdom.