大唐內典錄 1.3

1.3

In tracing the origin [of the Dharma], that the saddharma is designated a treasure truly has its reason. It is genuinely the ford and ferryway for transcending the mundane, the track and axle-tree for entering into the real. Therefore, through successive eons the superior and holy have looked up to it as to their father and mother; following antiquity down to the present, they have exalted it as like the sun and moon. How could it not be because it discards the snare of the inverted notion of self and completely plumbs the treasured position of non-arising? From the time the Sage's Park [Mṛgadāva] proclaimed fulfillment and the Golden River [Hiraṇyavatī] serenely ferried [beings to nirvāṇa], characters and words were displayed to the various beings to draw out and lead forth the dust-enshrouded and unenlightened. Devising plans and strategies according to dispositions and capacities, setting forth spoken instructions in pursuit of natures and inclinations, it netted a single transformation and subsumed the great chiliocosm. Those who receive its Way are hard to praise enough; those who transmit its lineage make it easily understood. Thus the Venerable Kāśyapa compiled the four baskets at Mount Gṛdhrakūṭa, and Mañjuśrī of Great Wisdom convened the eight piṭakas outside the enclosing mountains [Cakravāḍa]. Thus could it flow forth and cover future ages, bringing to completion a long life of seventy thousand [years]; its lingering waves gradually seeped eastward, reaching a span of six hundred [years] of auspicious fortune. In examining its beginning in brāhmī script, they were borne upon fragrant elephants numbering by the hundreds of millions. Now translated into local dialects, they comprise roughly more than five thousand fascicles. As times have shifted and alternated, and the frivolous and pure have been displayed by turns, there are single and retranslations among fascicles and sections, and apocrypha as well as mundane and sacred [texts]. This has caused compilers of catalogues to vie eagerly in more than thirty lineages. In raising principles, each has its own model; yet in cross-examination and verification, they are not without complexity and confusion. Now I bring together all the various works, classifying them into categories, combining them into a single work divided into ten sections. Displayed and listed according to specific rubrics without disrupting the order, though the texts are repeatedly set out, their purport is completely free of perplexity. As for the constant teachings of the Great Sage, that stream is termed sūtra; explaining the sūtras and recounting the Sage, that stream is termed śāstra. None is not a method for dislodging stagnation, a standard discourse for converging upon the correct. If held dear and venerated, transcending rebirth may be anticipated; if doubted and slandered, imitating evil will follow. Therefore, having tentatively weighed and selected from the vast abundance, I set forth the preface as follows.