達摩笈多

《續高僧傳》卷二為之立本傳，起首即記其種姓與名：「達摩笈多。隋言法密。」〔T50n2060 0434c23〕，「剎帝利種。姓弊耶伽囉。此云虎氏。」〔T50n2060 0434c24〕。他是長子，「有弟四人。身居長子。父母留戀不聽出家。」〔T50n2060 0434c25〕——出家之路，起手便是家人的不許；「然以篤愛法門深願離俗。」〔T50n2060 0434c26〕，二十三歲乃遠出中賢豆，於眾園寺中「方得落髮。改名法密。年二十五方受具戒。」〔T50n2060 0435a01〕。

The Continued Biographies of Eminent Monks*, fascicle two, gives him a life of his own. It opens with his caste and his name: "Dharmagupta — in the Sui tongue, 'Dharma-Secret'" 〔T50n2060 0434c23〕; "of the kṣatriya caste, of the clan Vyāghra, which is to say the Tiger clan" 〔T50n2060 0434c24〕. He was the eldest son: "He had four younger brothers and stood first among them; his parents clung to him and would not let him go forth" 〔T50n2060 0434c25〕 — the road out began with a refusal at home. "Yet so deep was his love of the Dharma-gate, so earnest his vow to leave the world" 〔T50n2060 0434c26〕, that at twenty-three he went far off to Central India, and only in a monastery there "was his head at last shaved, and his name changed to Dharma-Secret; at twenty-five he received the full precepts" 〔T50n2060 0434c29〕.*

受具之後三年就師學問，其後便是十餘年的西行東行。他「於是歷諸大小乘國及以僧寺。聞見倍多。」〔T50n2060 0435a17〕，「但以志在遊方情無所繫。」〔T50n2060 0435a21〕；於商客所聞支那三寶興盛，同行者遂定議：「同侶一心屬意來此。非惟觀其風化。願在利物弘經。」〔T50n2060 0435a27〕。路上停停走走——渴羅槃陀一年、沙勒兩載、龜茲兩年、烏耆兩年、高昌兩年、伊吾一載——至西南砂磧，水草俱乏，「乃以所齎經論權置道旁。越山求水冀以存濟。」〔T50n2060 0435b15〕；求水不遂，「專誦觀世音呪。夜雨忽降身心充悅。」〔T50n2060 0435b17〕。及至瓜州，傳作一結語：「笈多遠慕大國跋涉積年。初契同徒或留或歿。獨顧單影屆斯勝地。靜言思之悲喜交集。」〔T50n2060 0435b20〕。

Three years with his teacher after ordination, and then a decade and more of walking. "He passed thus through the kingdoms and the monasteries of the Great and the Lesser Vehicles alike, and what he saw and heard was multiplied" 〔T50n2060 0435a17〕; "only, his will being set on travel, his feelings were tied to nothing" 〔T50n2060 0435a21〕. Hearing from merchants that the Three Jewels flourished in the land of the Chinese, he and his companions resolved: "His fellow travellers with one mind set their hearts on coming here — not merely to observe its manners and culture, but wishing to benefit beings and spread the scriptures" 〔T50n2060 0435a27〕. The road went in stages — a year at Kharghalik, two at Kashgar, two at Kucha, two at Agni, two at Gaochang, one at Yiwu — until in the sandy waste to the southwest, with neither water nor grass, "they set down the scriptures and treatises they carried by the roadside, and crossed the hills to look for water, hoping so to keep alive" 〔T50n2060 0435b15〕. The search failed; "he recited the Avalokiteśvara dhāraṇī with a single mind, and in the night rain suddenly fell, and body and mind were filled with ease" 〔T50n2060 0435b17〕. When at last he reached Guazhou the biography sets down its one summing-up: "Dharmagupta had longed for the great country from afar and had trudged the years through. Of those who first pledged to go with him, some stayed behind and some had died; he looked round on his single shadow and came to this excellent land. Considering it in silence, sorrow and joy met in him together" 〔T50n2060 0435b20〕.

開皇十年冬十月入京〔T50n2060 0435b23〕，自此譯業不輟。傳稱其「慈恕立身柔和成性。心非道外行在言前。」〔T50n2060 0435b27〕，又稱其「自居譯人之首。惟存傳授。」〔T50n2060 0435c05〕——居首而唯以傳授為念，此語可與其譯《藥師》卷首譯序「此本最定，諸讀誦者願莫更疑」〔T14n0449 0401a28〕之語並看：定其本，是為讀誦者定，不為己名。隋末，「及隋綱云頹郊壘煙構。梵本新經一時斯斷。」〔T50n2060 0435c11〕，而「笈多蘊其深解遂闕陳弘。」〔T50n2060 0435c12〕——所解者深，而無由更講。二十八載之譯，七部三十二卷〔T50n2060 0435c13〕，其中《藥師本願》與《攝大乘》二者，即本編今日所讀之本。武德二年終于洛汭〔T50n2060 0435c16〕。

He entered the capital in the tenth month of winter, the tenth year of Kaihuang 〔T50n2060 0435b23〕, and from then on the translating did not stop. The biography says of him that "kindness and forbearance were the ground of his person and gentleness the grain of his nature; his heart was never outside the Way, and his conduct went before his words" 〔T50n2060 0435b27〕, and again that "he stood at the head of the translators, and cared only for the handing on" 〔T50n2060 0435c05〕 — first in rank, and mindful of nothing but transmission. Set that beside the translator's preface at the head of his Medicine Buddha*: "This version is the most settled; may those who read and recite it doubt no further" 〔T14n0449 0401a28〕. The settling of the text was for the sake of those who would recite it, not for a name. At the end of the Sui, "when the fabric of the dynasty fell and the ramparts smoked, the new Sanskrit texts were cut off all at once" 〔T50n2060 0435c11〕, and "Dharmagupta kept his deep understanding folded away, with no further occasion to set it forth" 〔T50n2060 0435c12〕. Twenty-eight years of translating: seven works in thirty-two fascicles 〔T50n2060 0435c13〕 — among them the* Original Vows of the Medicine Buddha and the Mahāyānasaṃgraha*, the very texts read in this edition today. In the second year of Wude he died at the bend of the Luo 〔T50n2060 0435c16〕.*