大唐內典錄 10.4

10.4

Preface: Since Buddhist sūtras flowed into the Eastern Xia over six hundred years ago, they have three times suffered suppression and eradication. When protectors of the Dharma arose seeing the opportune moment, they first concealed [the texts] in crags and caves, steadfastly preserving the ultimate truth. But drenching mists and moisture caused them to rot and decay. Only when the Dharma flourished later did [people] take up the task of collecting the remnants. Not one in a hundred survived; only the broad outlines were preserved. Fortunately, across the five dynasties south of the Yangtze, faith remained unflagging, thereby allowing the transmitted Dharma texts to circulate throughout the realm. Yet at the end of the Western Jin, the empire fell into ruin; the translators suffered calamities and had nowhere even to die, so how could the texts of the sūtras alone remain secure? Furthermore, Emperor Ling of the Han fled anxiously back and forth between east and west, and at that time Buddhist sūtras and secular classics were lost together. Consequently, cases where both title and text are lost are not few. Now, bringing together the various catalogues and assembling them into a whole, one finds that while the texts are absent upon collating, the titles are present upon checking the catalogues. Fearing that later finders, seeing they are not in the current catalogue, might cast them aside as apocrypha, I have therefore perused various ancient and modern catalogues, collating whether texts of the sūtras exist or not. If they exist, they are entered into the canon accordingly; if they do not, their titles are recorded in anticipation of future search. May those who share this path hold this in mind and gather them extensively.