真諦

真諦之來，是梁武帝求來的。大同中勅使送扶南獻使返國，「仍請名德三藏」〔T50n2060 0429c13〕與大乘諸論，「彼國乃屈真諦并齎經論。恭膺帝旨。」〔T50n2060 0429c15〕大同十二年八月十五日達于南海，太清二年閏八月始屆京邑，「武皇面申頂禮。於寶雲殿竭誠供養。」〔T50n2060 0429c19〕——迎他的禮數已備。而就在此時，「屬道銷梁季寇羯憑陵。法為時崩不果宣述。」〔T50n2060 0429c21〕他到的那一年，正是他要譯的那個朝廷開始崩壞的那一年。

Paramārtha came because Emperor Wu of the Liang sent for him. In the Datong years an envoy escorting the Funan mission home was ordered to "request a Tripiṭaka master of renown" 〔T50n2060 0429c13〕 together with the Mahāyāna treatises, and "that country thereupon prevailed on Paramārtha, who brought scriptures and treatises with him in reverent answer to the imperial command" 〔T50n2060 0429c15〕. He reached the southern sea on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the twelfth year of Datong, and first arrived at the capital in the intercalary eighth month of the second year of Taiqing, where "Emperor Wu did him homage in person and made offerings to him with full sincerity in the Baoyun Hall" 〔T50n2060 0429c19〕 — the honours of reception were complete. And it was just then that "the Way was worn away in the last years of the Liang and the Jie raiders pressed in; the Dharma collapsed with the times and he could not set forth what he had" 〔T50n2060 0429c21〕. The year he arrived was the year the court he had been summoned to began to fall.

此後二十餘年，他的譯事是在流離中做的。步入東土，至富春令陸元哲處招延沙門二十餘人，「翻十七地論。適得五卷。」〔T50n2060 0429c24〕天保三年為侯景所請還臺，而「兵饑相接。法幾頹焉」。承聖之際止金陵正觀寺，與願禪師等二十餘人翻《金光明經》。其後還豫章、往新吳始興、隨蕭太保度嶺至南康，「並隨方翻譯。栖遑靡託。」〔T50n2060 0430a01〕天嘉四年，揚都僧宗、法准、僧忍遠浮江表親承勞問，他欣其來意，「乃為翻攝大乘等論。首尾兩載覆疎宗旨。」〔T50n2060 0430a10〕本編所據之《攝大乘論》〔T31n1593〕與《攝大乘論釋》〔T31n1595〕即此兩載之所出。三年九月發自梁安汎舶西引，而「業風賦命飄還廣州」〔T50n2060 0430a16〕——欲去而不得去，遂於制旨寺對慧愷等翻《唯識論》等。

For the twenty-odd years that followed, his translating was done on the move. He went on foot into the eastern lands, and at the house of Lu Yuanzhe, magistrate of Fuchun, twenty-odd śramaṇas were gathered in and "they rendered the Treatise on the Seventeen Stages — of which only five fascicles were got" 〔T50n2060 0429c24〕. In the third year of Tianbao he was invited back to the palace by Hou Jing, in a season when "war and famine came one upon the other, and the Dharma was near to falling." In the Chengsheng years he stayed at Zhengguan monastery in Jinling and with Meditation Master Yuan and twenty-odd others rendered the Golden Light Sūtra. Then back to Yuzhang, on to Xinwu and Shixing, over the ranges with Grand Guardian Xiao as far as Nankang — "translating wherever he was, unsettled and without a place to rest" 〔T50n2060 0430a01〕. In the fourth year of Tianjia, Sengzong, Fazhun and Sengren crossed far over the Yangtze from Yangdu to put their questions in person; glad at their coming, "he rendered for them the Mahāyānasaṃgraha and other treatises; over two years from first to last he went again through the purport of them" 〔T50n2060 0430a10〕. The Mahāyānasaṃgraha 〔T31n1593〕 and its Exposition 〔T31n1595〕 that this edition works from are the yield of those two years. In the ninth month of the third year he set out from Liang'an by ship, drawing west, but "the wind of karma disposed of him and blew him back to Guangzhou" 〔T50n2060 0430a16〕 — unable to leave, he rendered at Zhizhi monastery, opposite Huikai and the rest, the Treatise on Consciousness-only and more.

其譯之量，本傳計為「凡二十三載。所出經論記傳。六十四部。合二百七十八卷。」〔T50n2060 0430b20〕其書卻未得行於當時：宗、愷諸僧欲延他還建業，而京中碩望恐奪時榮，奏曰「嶺表所譯眾部。多明無塵唯識。言乖治術有蔽國風。不隷諸華可流荒服。」〔T50n2060 0430b05〕帝然之——一部唯識之學，被奏為不宜入中土之文而止。太建元年遘疾，「遺訣。嚴正勗示因果。」〔T50n2060 0430b08〕書傳累紙付弟子智休；正月十一日午時遷化，「時年七十有一」〔T50n2060 0430b09〕，生年由此逆推。本編所讀之真諦，多在其弟子筆下：慧愷「乃對翻攝論。躬受其文。」〔T50n2060 0431b04〕法泰於制旨寺「筆受文義。垂二十年。」〔T50n2060 0431a14〕藏中未見繫其受業之師者，本編如實記其無。

The bulk of his work the biography reckons thus: "from the end of Emperor Wu of the Liang to the accession of Emperor Xuan of the Chen, twenty-three years in all, the sūtras, treatises, records and lives he brought out were sixty-four works in two hundred and seventy-eight fascicles" 〔T50n2060 0430b20〕. Yet the books did not circulate in his own day: Zong, Kai and the monks wished to bring him back to Jianye, but the great names of the capital, fearing their present glory would be taken from them, memorialised that "the several works translated beyond the ranges set out in the main the Yogācāra teaching of no external dust; the wording runs counter to the arts of government and darkens the manners of the realm; it should not be entered among the texts of the central lands but may circulate in the outer regions" 〔T50n2060 0430b05〕 — and the emperor agreed. A whole body of Yogācāra learning was stopped by a memorial calling it unfit for the central lands. He fell ill in the first year of Taijian and "left a stern parting charge on cause and effect" 〔T50n2060 0430b08〕, pages of it entrusted to his disciple Zhixiu; at noon on the eleventh day of the first month he passed away, "in his seventy-first year" 〔T50n2060 0430b09〕, from which his birth year is reckoned back. The Paramārtha this edition reads comes largely through his disciples' brushes: Huikai "rendered the Mahāyānasaṃgraha opposite the master, receiving the text from his own mouth" 〔T50n2060 0431b04〕, and Fatai at Zhizhi monastery "took down text and meaning by brush for nearly twenty years" 〔T50n2060 0431a14〕. The canon carries no record naming the master under whom he studied, and this edition records that absence as it stands.