出三藏記集 12.34

12.34

Since the Great Sage shifted His radiance, the years have stretched long and distant. That the Dharma and the Saṅgha have not fallen to ruin—is it not solely due to the vinaya? When the Vinaya Piṭaka was first compiled, all shared a single standard of study. In middle antiquity, differing tenets arose, splitting into five separate schools. Once divided into five schools, transmission and practice followed each teacher; only the Sarvāstivāda school gained wide circulation in the land of Qi. Its source arose in India and its transforming influence flowed into Kapiśa. Former sages and later worthies added brightness to brilliance: some elevated their virtue to the stages of abiding, some realized the Way of the four fruits; some manifested signs and marked auspicious portents, while others concealed their traces and mingled with the ordinary. All upheld the vinaya deportment and propagated the transformation of the Dharma. The old records contained fifty-three persons. From then onward, wise and sagacious masters successively arose; all inherited the glorious precedent of the past and bequeathed a standard to the present. In this terminal age, the five groups of disciples base their teaching on this; the lingering breeze and remaining glory can be brightly traced. He who rests in the shade of a tree protects its roots; he who drinks from a spring reveres its source. How could one cherish the profound instructions yet fail to record and list these persons? In my youth, I took refuge in the Dharma; now, past the age of knowing one's destiny, I look up to the vast compassion of the Former Awakened One and honor the bequeathed virtue of my late master. Mediocre and shallow though I am, I inherited the study of the Daśādhyāya-vinaya, and have chanted, relished, and lectured on it for three decades now. Whenever I open the sacred texts, profound feelings stir; gazing down the distant path, my heart leaps up. Thus I sought and inquired into the past and present, compiling the Record of the Sarvāstivāda. Where earlier transmissions contained differences, I recorded them all to broaden knowledge; where later worthies had not ceased, I composed biographies to fill the gaps, encompassing more than ninety men old and new. May their noble renown and the ultimate teaching spread forever, and may their glorious reality be renewed alongside the sun and the moon! This is the grand purpose of my compilation. As for the systematic prefaces to the other schools, I leave them to the insightful and eminent; suffering from illness and mental haze, I must forgo ornate rhetoric. If anyone should peruse this, may they overlook the phrasing and grasp the essence.