大宋僧史略 1.32

1.32

昔劉向校書天祿。見有佛經。知于時未事翻傳。必存梵夾。若然劉向安識梵字。而云列仙有七十餘人已見佛經。又以文殊菩薩亦號列仙耶。蓋劉向博識全才。象胥之學自能之矣。覽其梵夾。迴作華言。尋認七十許人見佛經也。若論翻譯。則摩騰初出四十二章經。及法蘭同譯十地佛本生法海藏佛本行等經。為其始也。次則安清支讖支謙等相繼翻述。漢末魏初。傳譯漸盛。或翻佛為眾祐。或翻辟支為古佛。支讖出首楞嚴經云。佛在王舍城靈鷲頂山中。存沒不同。用舍各異。斯乃譯經之推輪者焉。

Formerly, when Liu Xiang collated books in the Tianlu Pavilion, he saw Buddhist scriptures. We know that at that time no translations had yet been made, so they must have been preserved as Sanskrit palm-leaf manuscripts. If so, how did Liu Xiang recognize Sanskrit characters and say that among the ranked immortals there were more than seventy people who had already seen Buddhist scriptures? And was Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī also termed a ranked immortal? Liu Xiang possessed vast erudition and complete talent; the learning of interpreters came naturally to him. He perused their Sanskrit manuscripts, rendered them into Chinese, and thereby identified some seventy people who had seen Buddhist scriptures. If we speak of translation, then Kāśyapa Mātaṅga's initial production of the Sūtra of Forty-two Sections, together with Dharmaratna's co-translation of such scriptures as the Daśabhūmika, the Buddha's Jātaka, the Ocean of Dharma Pitaka, and the Buddha's Deeds, marked the beginning. Next, An Shigao, Lokakṣema, Zhi Qian, and others translated and transmitted in succession. From the end of the Han through the beginning of the Wei, translation gradually flourished, sometimes translating fo ('Buddha') as zhongyou ('blessing of the multitude'), or pratyekabuddha as gufo ('ancient Buddha'). Lokakṣema translated the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, which says: 'The Buddha was on Mount Gṛdhrakūṭa in Rājagṛha.' Retention and omission differed, and adoptions and rejections varied. These were the trail-blazers of scriptural translation.