曇鸞

「釋曇鸞。或為巒。未詳其氏。」〔T50n2060 0470a13〕——名有二形，氏則闕如，傳文開篇即自標其所不知，本編照留不補。

"Tanluan — also written Luan; his clan is not known" 〔T50n2060 0470a13〕. Two forms for the name, no surname at all: the life states what it does not know in its opening line, and this edition leaves the gap where it found it.

本傳所記其一生之轉，在一問一唾。他遇中國三藏菩提留支，往啟曰：「佛法中頗有長生不死法勝此土仙經者乎」〔T50n2060 0470b25〕——問的是長生。留支唾地而斥其言，「即以觀經授之曰。此大仙方。依之修行當得解脫生死。」〔T50n2060 0470b29〕所答者不是長生，是解脫生死；而所授之書，正是本系列淨土一軸所讀之《觀無量壽佛經》。「鸞尋頂受」，而「所齎仙方並火焚之」〔T50n2060 0470c01〕——所求既易，所齎者燒。本編所據之《往生論註》〔T40n1819〕，出於這一次轉身之後。

The turn of his life the biography lays in a question and a spit. Meeting Bodhiruci, the Tripiṭaka master of the Middle Land, he went up and asked: "is there in the Buddha-dharma any method of undying long life that surpasses this land's scriptures of the immortals?" 〔T50n2060 0470b25〕 — he was asking after long life. Bodhiruci spat on the ground and rebuked the question, and "thereupon handed him the Contemplation Sūtra, saying: this is the great immortals' formula; practise by it and you will win release from birth-and-death" 〔T50n2060 0470b29〕. What he was given was not long life but release from birth-and-death — and the book was the Contemplation Sūtra that this corpus reads on its Pure Land axis. "Luan received it with bowed head," and "the immortals' formulae he had carried he burned in the fire" 〔T50n2060 0470c01〕. What he had sought changed, and what he had carried was burnt. The Commentary on the Treatise on Rebirth 〔T40n1819〕 that this edition works from comes after that turn.

「魏主重之號為神鸞焉。」〔T50n2060 0470c02〕下勅令住并州大寺，晚復移住汾州北山石壁玄中寺。「以魏興和四年。因疾卒于平遙山寺。」〔T50n2060 0470c05〕「春秋六十有七。」〔T50n2060 0470c06〕魏興和四年＝542，生年 476 由此逆推。二數皆自本傳逐字得之，非取通行之說回填。

"The ruler of Wei esteemed him and styled him Spirit-Luan" 〔T50n2060 0470c02〕, issuing an edict that he reside at the great monastery of Bingzhou; later he moved to Xuanzhong monastery at the stone cliffs of the northern hills of Fenzhou. "In the fourth year of Xinghe under the Wei he fell ill and died at the mountain monastery of Pingyao" 〔T50n2060 0470c05〕, "in his sixty-seventh year" 〔T50n2060 0470c06〕. Xinghe 4 is 542, and the birth year 476 is reckoned back from it. Both figures are taken verbatim from the life itself, not filled in from the current accounts.