曇無讖

其名藏中不一，慧皎於傳首即誌其異而不強為一：「曇無讖，或云曇摩懺，或云曇無懺，蓋取梵音不同也」〔T50n2059 0335c16〕。出身則云「其本中天竺人，六歲遭父喪，隨母傭織」〔T50n2059 0335c17〕；所學先小後大，「初學小乘，兼覽五明諸論，講說精辯，莫能詶抗」〔T50n2059 0335c21〕。

His name is not written one way in the canon, and Huijiao sets the variants down at the head of the Life without forcing them into one: "Tanwuchen — some say Tanmochan, some say Tanwuchan; it is that the Sanskrit sound has been taken differently" 〔T50n2059 0335c16〕. Of his origin: "He was by birth a man of Central India. At six he lost his father, and followed his mother in hired weaving work" 〔T50n2059 0335c17〕. His learning went from the lesser vehicle to the greater: "At first he studied the Lesser Vehicle, and read besides the treatises of the five sciences; in exposition and debate he was sharp, and none could match him" 〔T50n2059 0335c21〕.

轉折不在勝辯，而在辯輸。「後遇白頭禪師，共讖論議，習業既異，交諍十旬」〔T50n2059 0335c22〕——十旬之爭而禪師終不肯屈，讖伏其精理，乃求見所據之經；「禪師即授以樹皮《涅槃經》本」〔T50n2059 0335c25〕。所得者不是勝負，是一部經：「讖尋讀驚悟，方自慚恨，以為坎井之識，久迷大方，於是集眾悔過，遂專大乘」〔T50n2059 0335c26〕。此後之譯業，皆從這一部樹皮寫本流出。

The turn came not in winning an argument but in losing one. "Afterward he met the White-Headed Meditation Master, and they debated together; their disciplines being different, the contention went back and forth for a hundred days" 〔T50n2059 0335c22〕 — and after a hundred days the meditation master still would not yield. Chen submitted to the fineness of his reasoning and asked to see the scripture he stood on; "the meditation master thereupon handed him a bark copy of the Nirvāṇa Sūtra" 〔T50n2059 0335c25〕. What he gained was not a victory but a text: "Chen read it through and was startled awake; only then was he ashamed and grieved, holding that with the understanding of a frog in a well he had long strayed from the great direction. So he gathered the assembly, repented of his fault, and thereafter devoted himself to the Great Vehicle" 〔T50n2059 0335c26〕. All the translating that followed flowed out of that one bark manuscript.

譯《涅槃》之難，一在語言，一在梵本。語言之難，他以三年學語解之〔T50n2059 0336a22〕。梵本之難則終身未解：本既品數未足，他兩度再求，於于闐得中分、後分，續譯為三十三卷〔T50n2059 0336b03〕；而所出與所本之量相差甚遠，他自言「此經梵本本三萬五千偈，於此方減百萬言，今所出者止一萬餘偈」〔T50n2059 0336b07〕。所餘之分終不可得——「至遜義和三年三月，讖固請西行，更尋《涅槃後分》」〔T50n2059 0336c11〕，此行遂為其死。臨發之日他已自知：「讖業對將至，眾聖不能救矣」〔T50n2059 0336c14〕。僧祐所記其志同：「讖常慨然。誓必重尋」〔T55n2145 0103b17〕。

The difficulty of translating the Nirvāṇa Sūtra was twofold: the language and the Sanskrit original. The first he solved by three years of learning the speech 〔T50n2059 0336a22〕. The second he never solved. The copy he had was short of chapters, so twice he sought further, obtaining the middle and latter portions in Khotan and continuing the translation to thirty-three scrolls 〔T50n2059 0336b03〕; yet what came out fell far short of what stood behind it, as he himself said: "The Sanskrit of this scripture is in its origin thirty-five thousand verses, which here would come to something under a million words; what has been brought out now is only some ten thousand verses" 〔T50n2059 0336b07〕. The remainder was never to be had — "in the third month of the third year of Yihe under Mengxun, Chen insisted on going west to seek further for the latter portion of the Nirvāṇa Sūtra" 〔T50n2059 0336c11〕 — and that journey was his death. On the day of departure he already knew: "The recompense of Chen's deeds is about to arrive; the host of sages cannot save me" 〔T50n2059 0336c14〕. Sengyou records the same resolve: "Chen was always moved to indignation over it, and vowed that he must seek it again" 〔T55n2145 0103b17〕.