僧祐

《高僧傳》卷十一為之立本傳。他出家之志起得極早：「釋僧祐，本姓俞氏，其先彭城下邳人，父世居于建業。」〔T50n2059 0402c04〕，「祐年數歲，入建初寺禮拜。因踊躍樂道，不肯還家。」〔T50n2059 0402c05〕——數歲之童，一入寺便不肯回。父母憐其志而許之。十四歲，家中密議婚事，「祐知而避至定林，投法達法師。」〔T50n2059 0402c07〕。及年滿受具，「初受業於沙門法穎。」〔T50n2059 0402c10〕，法穎為當時律學所宗，而「祐迺竭思鑽求，無懈昏曉。遂大精律部，有勵先哲。」〔T50n2059 0402c11〕。他一生的根，扎在律上；後來錄經之嚴，正是這一根上長出來的枝。

The Biographies of Eminent Monks*, fascicle eleven, gives him a life of his own. His resolve to leave home came very early: "Sengyou's lay surname was Yu; his forebears were men of Xiapi in Pengcheng, and his father's household had settled at Jianye" 〔T50n2059 0402c04〕; "when You was a few years old he went into Jianchu monastery to make his bows, and leapt for joy at the Way and would not go home" 〔T50n2059 0402c05〕 — a child of a few years who, once inside, would not come back out. His parents, moved by his resolve, let him go. At fourteen, when a marriage was being quietly arranged, "You learned of it, slipped away to Dinglin, and put himself under the Dharma-master Fada" 〔T50n2059 0402c07〕. On reaching full ordination, "he first took instruction from the śramaṇa Faying" 〔T50n2059 0402c10〕, who was then the acknowledged authority in Vinaya studies; and "You spent all his thought in boring down after it, slackening neither at dusk nor at dawn, and so came to great precision in the Vinaya division, matching himself against the worthies before him" 〔T50n2059 0402c11〕. The root of his life went down into the Vinaya; the strictness of his later cataloguing is a branch grown from that root.*

其講席之盛，傳記一筆：「齊竟陵文宣王每請講律，聽眾常七八百人。」〔T50n2059 0402c12〕；永明中奉勅入吳，試簡五眾，宣講十誦，更申受戒之法。所得信施，他不入私囊：「凡獲信施，悉以治定林、建初及修繕諸寺」〔T50n2059 0402c14〕，並建無遮大集、捨身齋等，「及造立經藏，搜校卷軸。」〔T50n2059 0402c16〕——造經藏而校卷軸，這是《出三藏記集》所從出之事。傳自為之斷曰：「使夫寺廟開廣，法言無墜，咸其力也。」〔T50n2059 0402c17〕。他還有一種不常見的本事：「祐為性巧思，能目准心計，及匠人依標，尺寸無爽。」〔T50n2059 0402c17〕——光宅、攝山大像與剡縣石佛，皆請他經始畫則。目量心計而尺寸不差，與他錄經之不苟，是同一副心。

Of the crowds at his lectures the life notes only this: "Prince Wenxuan of Jingling under the Qi would regularly invite him to lecture on the Vinaya, and his hearers were commonly seven or eight hundred" 〔T50n2059 0402c12〕. In the Yongming years he was sent by imperial order into Wu to examine the five assemblies, to expound the Ten Recitations*, and to restate the procedure for receiving the precepts. What was offered him in faith he did not keep: "whatever he received in offerings he used entirely to repair Dinglin and Jianchu and to restore other monasteries" 〔T50n2059 0402c14〕, to hold unrestricted great assemblies and body-relinquishing feasts, "and to found a scripture repository and search out and collate its scrolls" 〔T50n2059 0402c16〕 — the founding of a repository and the collating of its scrolls: this is the work out of which the* Collection of Records on the Tripiṭaka came. The life passes its own judgment: "That the monasteries were opened wide and the words of the Dharma were not let fall was in every case owing to his exertion" 〔T50n2059 0402c17〕. He had besides an uncommon skill: "You was by nature ingenious in design, able to gauge by eye and reckon in the mind, so that when the artisans worked to his marks not an inch was out" 〔T50n2059 0402c17〕 — the great images at Guangzhai and Sheshan and the stone Buddha at Shan county were all begun and laid out at his direction. To measure by eye and be exact to the inch is the same cast of mind as to catalogue scriptures and let nothing pass.

天監十七年五月二十六日卒于建初寺，春秋七十有四〔T50n2059 0402c26〕。傳末乃記其撰述之所由：「初祐集經藏既成，使人抄撰要事」〔T50n2059 0402c29〕，而後列其目——《三藏記》《法苑記》《世界記》《釋迦譜》及《弘明集》等，皆行於世〔T50n2059 0403a01–a02〕。先有經藏，後有錄：錄不是書齋裡列出來的，是搜校卷軸之後抄撰出來的。本編凡稱「祐錄」者，即此《出三藏記集》；其於本系列，或為某經現存最早之著錄，或為序文之所賴以存，或為南朝單篇別行之見證——而其全帙檢索之零命中，本編亦如實記錄，不由無著錄推造結論。

On the twenty-sixth day of the fifth month of the seventeenth year of Tianjian he died at Jianchu monastery, in his seventy-fourth year 〔T50n2059 0402c26〕. The life closes by recording how his writings came about: "When You had finished assembling the scripture repository he had men make excerpts and compile its essential matters" 〔T50n2059 0402c29〕, and then lists them — the Records on the Tripiṭaka*, the* Records of the Dharma Garden*, the* Records of the World*, the* Genealogy of Śākya*, and the* Hongming Collection*, all of which circulated in the world 〔T50n2059 0403a01–a02〕. The repository came first and the catalogue after: the catalogue was not drawn up in a study but excerpted out of scrolls that had been searched out and collated. Wherever this edition speaks of "Yourecord" it means this* Collection of Records on the Tripiṭaka*; within the corpus it serves now as the earliest surviving entry for a given scripture, now as the text through which a preface survives, now as witness to the separate circulation of single treatises in the Southern Dynasties — and where a search of the whole work yields nothing, that too is recorded as it stands, with no conclusion manufactured out of an absence.*