大宋僧史略 1.32

1.32

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.