法藏

法藏字賢首，姓康，其家出康居〔T50n2061 0732a14〕。年十六，於阿育王舍利塔前煉一指以伸供養〔T50n2054 0280b13〕。此後更遊太白，聞雲華寺智儼講《華嚴經》，「投為上足」〔T50n2054 0280b15〕。有一夜忽覩神光來燭庭宇，他歎曰：「當有異人弘揚大教」〔T50n2054 0281b03〕——說的是講席上的那一位，不是自己。既飡智儼之妙解，「以為真吾師也」，而智儼亦「喜傳炷之得人」〔T50n2054 0281b08〕。總章元年智儼將化，法藏猶居俗，年二十六；智儼以他累囑道成、薄塵二大德：「此賢者注意於華嚴。蓋無師自悟。紹隆遺法其惟是人。」〔T50n2054 0281b14〕付囑之語落在一個尚未出家的人身上。

Fazang, styled Xianshou, was of the surname Kang, his family from Sogdiana 〔T50n2061 0732a14〕. At sixteen he burned a finger before the relic stūpa of King Aśoka as an offering 〔T50n2054 0280b13〕. Thereafter he travelled again to Mount Taibai, and hearing Zhiyan lecture on the Huayan Sūtra at Yunhua monastery he "attached himself to him and became his foremost disciple" 〔T50n2054 0280b15〕. One night he suddenly saw a divine light come and illumine the courtyard, and sighed: "There must be an extraordinary man here who will propagate the great teaching" 〔T50n2054 0281b03〕 — meaning the man in the lecturer's seat, not himself. Having fed on Zhiyan's subtle understanding he "held him to be truly his master," and Zhiyan too "rejoiced that the passing of the flame had found its man" 〔T50n2054 0281b08〕. In the first year of Zongzhang, as Zhiyan was about to depart and Fazang, then twenty-six, was still in lay life, Zhiyan charged the two great worthies Daocheng and Bochen: "This worthy man has set his mind on the Huayan; he awakened without a master. The one to carry on and raise up the bequeathed teaching is he alone" 〔T50n2054 0281b14〕. The charge was laid on a man who had not yet left home.

出家而未進具，即承旨於所配寺「講百千經」〔T50n2054 0281b22〕。天后之朝，「傳譯首登其數」〔T50n2061 0732a18〕：實叉難陀齎《華嚴》梵夾至，他與義淨、復禮同譯出新經，起於證聖、成於聖歷，益九千偈，勒成八十卷，而「命藏筆受。復禮綴文。」〔T50n2054 0282a18〕本編所據之八十《華嚴》，即出於此一譯場，他在其中是執筆受言的那一位。其後奉詔譯《大乘入楞伽經》七卷，璽書稱其「補求那之闕文。翦流支之繁句。」〔T50n2054 0282b03〕；與日照共譯《密嚴》等十餘部二十四卷〔T50n2054 0282b05〕；神龍中復與實叉難陀於林光殿譯《大寶積經》文殊師利授記會三卷〔T50n2054 0282b06〕。帝賜別號「國一法師」〔T50n2054 0281a14〕，又降綸旨為菩薩戒師〔T50n2054 0280b21〕。

Having left home but not yet taken full ordination, he lectured by imperial direction on "the Hundred-Thousand-Verse Sūtra" at his assigned monastery 〔T50n2054 0281b22〕. Under the Empress's court he "stood first among those enrolled for translation" 〔T50n2061 0732a18〕: when Śikṣānanda arrived with the Sanskrit bundles of the Huayan, Fazang joined Yijing and Fuli in producing the new sūtra — begun in the Zhengsheng period, completed in the Shengli, adding nine thousand verses and forming eighty fascicles, with "Fazang ordered to take it down and Fuli to compose the wording" 〔T50n2054 0282a18〕. The eighty-fascicle Huayan this edition works from came out of that bureau, and his place in it was the brush. Afterwards he translated by edict the Laṅkāvatāra in seven fascicles, of which the sealed rescript said that it "supplies what was missing in Guṇabhadra's text and prunes the prolix lines of Bodhiruci" 〔T50n2054 0282b03〕; with Divākara he translated the Ghanavyūha and more than ten other works in twenty-four fascicles 〔T50n2054 0282b05〕; and in the Shenlong period he translated again with Śikṣānanda, in the Linguang Hall, the Prophecy of Mañjuśrī assembly of the Ratnakūṭa in three fascicles 〔T50n2054 0282b06〕. The emperor bestowed on him the title "Dharma Master First in the Realm" 〔T50n2054 0281a14〕, and an imperial order made him bodhisattva-precept master 〔T50n2054 0280b21〕.

智儼付藏，藏遂為則天講新《華嚴經》〔T50n2061 0732a21〕——付囑之語與講席之事，相去二十餘年而終相應。本編所用其書二部：《大乘起信論義記》〔T44n1846〕與《華嚴一乘教義分齊章》〔T45n1866〕；後者底本署「撰」，本編以其為通論之章而非一經之疏，關係欄繫「造」，原署之字照錄於〈著述〉。先天元年十一月十四日終於西京大薦福寺，「春秋七十」〔T50n2054 0280c04〕；生年由此逆推，《宋高僧傳》有其傳而不記卒年〔T50n2061 0732a13〕。

Zhiyan entrusted the teaching to Fazang, and Fazang expounded the new Huayan Sūtra for the Empress 〔T50n2061 0732a21〕 — the charge and the lecturer's seat, more than twenty years apart, answering each other at last. Two of his works are used in this edition: the Commentary on the Awakening of Faith 〔T44n1846〕 and the Essay on the Divisions of the One-Vehicle Teaching of the Huayan 〔T45n1866〕; the base text heads the latter "compiled," and because it is a general treatise rather than a commentary on one sūtra this edition files it under "composed," the original word kept in the bibliography. He died on the fourteenth day of the eleventh month of the first year of Xiantian at Dajianfu Monastery in the western capital, "in his seventieth year" 〔T50n2054 0280c04〕; his birth year is reckoned back from that, and the Song Biographies, which carry his life, do not record the year of his death 〔T50n2061 0732a13〕.