出三藏記集 11.20

11.20

The Tattvasiddhi-śāstra in sixteen fascicles was produced by Master Kumārajīva in Chang'an, with Tan'gui as the scribal recorder and Tanying making the fair copy. Ying, wishing to make the text profound, later rearranged it into five divisions on his own; the rest all followed the old text. In the tenth month of the seventh year of the Yongming era of the Qi, Prince Wenxuan gathered more than five hundred eminent monks of great learning from the capital, and invited Master Sengrou of Dinglin Monastery and Master Huici of Xie Monastery to take turns lecturing on it at Puhong Monastery, wishing to make them investigate its dark subtleties and resolve questionable attachments while seated. He further requested Sengyou and Master Zhicheng of Anle Monastery to assemble more than seven hundred famous and virtuous individuals from the two assemblies of the nun community to continue lecturing on the Daśādhyāya-vinaya, aspiring to cause the four assemblies to purify their karmas and return to purity. The Prince consistently considered the Mahāyāna sūtras to be deep and profound, the ford that fulfills the Way, and the pivot of the True Dharma; yet in recent generations they had declined, with none earnestly cultivating them, abandoning the root to pursue the branches and wasting effort on verbose treatises. Therefore, right at the Vinaya seat, he instructed Rou, Ci, and other masters of treatises to excerpt and collate the Tattvasiddhi, pruning the verbose and preserving the essentials, abridging it into nine fascicles so that with concise phrasing and prominent principle it would be easy to study and investigate. On the twenty-third day of the first month of the eighth year, the assembly was dissolved, and offerings of three grades corresponding to the three karmas were separately distributed to reward those who had merit and encourage those who fell short: the highest received more than thirty items, the middle about twenty kinds, and the lowest merely several articles. Thereupon one hundred copies of the abridged treatise were transcribed and circulated, and Zhou Yong was instructed to compose a preface to the treatise. It is now recorded below.