慧簡

其人記載寥寥。古錄不記其鄉里、不記其師承、不記其生卒，唯記其譯經之年與地——「以孝武帝大明元年丁酉。於鹿野寺譯五天使者等經十部」〔T55n2154 0531b27〕；而智昇於此人開卷即自承不知，作「未詳何許人也」〔T55n2154 0531b27〕。凡其行事，藏中所存止此。

Of the man himself the record is thin. The old catalogues give neither his native place, nor his teachers, nor the years of his birth and death — only the year and the place of his translating: "In the first year of Daming under Emperor Xiaowu, the year dingyou, at Luye Monastery he translated ten works, the Sūtra of the Five Heavenly Messengers and the rest" 〔T55n2154 0531b27〕. And Zhisheng, opening his entry on the man, avows at once that he does not know: "it is not known where he was from" 〔T55n2154 0531b27〕. Of his doings, this is all the canon preserves.

他之所以在本編出現，不在其傳而在一樁未決之事。藥師一經漢傳四譯，其最古一層之歸屬，古人自身即不能定：隋本譯序記其前有宋世舊譯，唐人逐文鏡以三名配三譯而以「宋孝武世大明元年譯出之本」當其一〔T38n1770 0257a10〕；而《開元錄》檢其文，斷為《灌頂經》卷十二之別行〔T55n2154 0594a02〕；僧祐則更早一步，直將其《灌頂經》一卷列入疑經，云「依經抄撰」〔T55n2145 0039a23〕。三說各有所據而不能相攝。本編於此處立「誌錄不判」之例〔《藥師經》凡例〕——古人既未定，今亦不代定。

He appears in this edition not for his Life but for an unsettled question. Of the four Chinese translations of the Bhaiṣajyaguru scripture, the attribution of the oldest layer was already beyond the ancients' power to settle. The preface to the Sui recension records that a Song-era translation preceded it; a Tang line-by-line commentary matches the sūtra's three titles to three translations and assigns one of them to "the version brought out in the first year of the Daming era in the time of Emperor Xiaowu of the Song" 〔T38n1770 0257a10〕. The Kaiyuan Catalogue, examining the text, judges it to be the twelfth scroll of the Consecration Sūtra put into separate circulation 〔T55n2154 0594a02〕. Sengyou had gone further still and earlier, placing his one-scroll Consecration Sūtra among the doubtful scriptures with the words "compiled in reliance on scripture" 〔T55n2145 0039a22〕. The three accounts each have their ground and cannot be folded into one another. Here this edition sets its rule of recording without adjudicating 〔Bhaiṣajyaguru Sūtra, Conventions〕 — the ancients did not settle it, and it is not settled here on their behalf.