出三藏記集 8.5

8.5

Formerly, when I was south of the Han River for fifteen years, I lectured on the Fangguang jing (Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra) twice every year. After arriving at the capital, nearly four years have passed, and I have also constantly done so twice a year, not daring to grow lax or indolent. Yet whenever I reached obscure phrases whose beginning and end were unclear, I would lay down the scroll and ponder deeply, regretting that I could not meet Dharmarakṣa, Mokṣala, and others. It happened that in the first month of the eighteenth year of the Jianyuan era, the King of the Nearer Tribe of Jushi, named Midi, came to the court. His national preceptor, named Kumārabodhi, presented an Indian text of the Dapin (Larger Prajñāpāramitā) in one work of 402 leaves, said to be twenty thousand ślokas—a śloka being thirty-two syllables, which is the Indian method of counting scriptures. Upon carefully counting it, there were altogether 17,260 ślokas, with 27 syllables remaining, making a total of 552,475 syllables.