出三藏記集 9.42

9.42

'Āgama-artha' in the language of Qin means 'tending toward nothingness'. After Ānanda recited the twelve divisions of scripture, he also extracted their essentials, which directly lead to the Dharma of the Way, making the Catur-āgama-artha, which, together with the Abhidharma and Vinaya, formed the tripiṭaka. Scholars of Shendu considered that the supreme virtue had not yet fallen to the ground. There was an arhat named Vasubhadra, who excerpted its essence to form a single text in nine chapters and forty-six folios, cutting out redundancies and eliminating repetitions, with concise text and abundant meaning; it may truly be called the garland of the scriptures. Excellent in the hundred practices, distinguishing right from wrong, there is nothing it does not record. Deep and rich, the mastery of practice is exhausted in it. There was a foreign śramaṇa styled Yintili, who had previously brought it to the Nearer Division [of Jushi], keeping it secret on his person and not showing it to others. Its king, Midi, sought to obtain it and recite it, and so it was able to be circulated. In the eighth month of the renwu year, traveling east to visit the monastery of my late master, in the Ye monastery I had Kumārabodhi hold the Hu text, Zhu Fonian and Fohu translate, and Sengdao, Tanjui, and Sengrui serve as scribal recorders; it was completed by the eleventh month in the winter. In the summer of this year, the Abhidharma was produced, and in the winter, this sūtra was produced; within a single year, two piṭakas were fully obtained. I consider myself deeply fortunate, but I only regret that it was not until my eighty-ninth year that I encountered this scripture; I fear the leather thongs will snap before I can complete the task. If a few more years were granted, there would perhaps be no great error. Recently, I instructed the translators merely to turn Hu into Qin, explaining the regional languages and nothing more; the literary ornamentation and plainness of the sūtra were not something I dared to alter. Furthermore, wherever there were uncertain numbers or uncertain matters, I consulted that person and annotated them below. Where my own understanding occasionally provided clarification, I made it an exposition. Where the exposition notes 'sūtra' [xiuduolu], that person was commenting on another scriptural text. Where it directly says 'sūtra' [xiuduolu], it cites a sūtra to verify, not as an explanatory note.