智儼

智儼姓趙，天水人。年十二，杜順入其舍，撫其頂而謂其父曰：「此我兒。可還我來。」〔T51n2073 0163b24〕父母知其有道，欣然不悋；杜順即以他付上足達法師。後二梵僧來至相寺，見其精爽非常，授以梵文，不日便熟，謂眾曰：「此童子當為弘法之匠也。」〔T51n2073 0163b28〕「年甫十四。即預緇衣」〔T51n2073 0163b29〕。此後所聽者《攝大乘論》、四分、迦延毘曇、《成實》、《十地》、《地持》、《涅槃》——所學既廣，反而無所適從，「乃至於經藏前。禮而自立誓。信手取之。得華嚴第一。」〔T51n2073 0163c08〕華嚴之為其一生所主，起於信手一取。

Zhiyan was of the surname Zhao, a man of Tianshui. In his twelfth year Dushun came into the house, stroked his head and said to his father: "This is my child; give him back to me" 〔T51n2073 0163b24〕. His parents, knowing the man had the Way, gave him up gladly and without grudging, and Dushun entrusted him to his foremost disciple, the Dharma master Da. Later two Indian monks came to Zhixiang monastery; seeing that his spirit was out of the ordinary they taught him Sanskrit, which he mastered within days, and they said to the assembly: "This boy will be a master who propagates the Dharma" 〔T51n2073 0163b28〕. "At just fourteen he took the dark robe" 〔T51n2073 0163b29〕. What he heard thereafter was the Mahāyānasaṃgraha, the Four-Part Vinaya, Kātyāyana's Abhidharma, the Tattvasiddhi, the Ten Grounds, the Bodhisattvabhūmi, the Nirvāṇa — and having learnt so widely he found no place to set his compass, until "he went before the scripture repository, made obeisance and took a vow, then reached out in trust and drew forth the first fascicle of the Huayan" 〔T51n2073 0163c08〕. That the Huayan became the work of his life began with a hand reaching out in trust.

其後遍覽藏經、討尋眾釋，得光統律師之文疏而「稍開殊軫」〔T51n2073 0163c12〕，所開者即「別教一乘無盡緣起」〔T51n2073 0163c13〕一義。復有異僧來語之曰：「汝欲得解一乘義者。其十地中六相之義。慎勿輕也。」〔T51n2073 0163c14〕言訖不現；他驚惕良久，因則陶研，「不盈累朔。於焉大啟。」〔T51n2073 0163c17〕——本編所讀之六相、十玄，其根在此。於是「遂立教分宗。製此經疏。時年二十七。」〔T51n2073 0163c17〕此疏即本編華嚴考據所取之《搜玄記》〔T35n1732〕；《傳記》總稱其著述「儼所撰義疏。解諸經論。凡二十餘部。皆簡略章句。剖曜新奇。」〔T51n2073 0164a04〕本編唯取實際引及之三部，非其全。

Thereafter he read through the canon and searched out the several commentaries; the written exposition transmitted from the Vinaya master Guangtong "opened a distinct track" 〔T51n2073 0163c12〕 for him, and what it opened was the doctrine of "the inexhaustible dependent arising of the One Vehicle of the distinct teaching" 〔T51n2073 0163c13〕. Then an extraordinary monk came and said to him: "If you would understand the meaning of the One Vehicle, do not make light of the doctrine of the six aspects within the Ten Grounds" 〔T51n2073 0163c14〕; having spoken, he vanished. Zhiyan was startled for a long while, then worked it over, and "in not many months it opened wide for him" 〔T51n2073 0163c17〕 — the six aspects and the ten profundities this edition reads have their root here. And so "he established the teaching and divided the tenets, and composed his commentary on this sūtra, being then twenty-seven" 〔T51n2073 0163c17〕. That commentary is the Souxuan ji 〔T35n1732〕 from which this edition's Huayan apparatus draws; the Record sums his writings thus: "the expositions Zhiyan composed, explaining the several sūtras and treatises, came to more than twenty works, all of them spare in phrasing and striking in their fresh light" 〔T51n2073 0164a04〕. This edition lists only the three it actually cites, not the whole.

疏成之後，他「又七宵行道。祈請是非」〔T51n2073 0163c18〕，夢神童而深蒙印可；然而「棲遑草澤。不競當代。」〔T51n2073 0163c19〕「及乎暮齒。方屈弘宣。」〔T51n2073 0163c20〕——二十七歲成疏，晚年方肯開講，中間數十年不出。他又「造蓮華藏世界圖一鋪」〔T51n2073 0163c22〕，《傳記》謂河之左古今未聞。總章元年，寺中般若臺傾倒之夢與門人慧曉之夢俱至，他自知遷神之候，告門人曰：「吾此幻軀從緣無性。今當暫往淨方。後遊蓮華藏世界。」〔T51n2073 0163c27〕俄至十月二十九日夜，神色如常，右脇而臥，終於清淨寺，「春秋六十七矣。」〔T51n2073 0164a01〕生年由此逆推。同年他將化去時，法藏猶居俗，年二十六；他以法藏累囑道成、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〕本編所用之疏，一在其手，一在受此付囑者之手。

After the commentary was done he "practised for seven nights, asking whether it were right or wrong" 〔T51n2073 0163c18〕, and dreamt of a divine youth who deeply gave his approval; yet "he dwelt unsettled among the grasses and marshes, not contending with his age" 〔T51n2073 0163c19〕, and "only in his late years did he bend to public preaching" 〔T51n2073 0163c20〕 — the commentary at twenty-seven, the lecturer's seat only in old age, and decades of silence between. He also "made a single panel of the Lotus-Treasury World chart" 〔T51n2073 0163c22〕, which the Record calls a thing unheard of east of the river, past or present. In the first year of Zongzhang his dream of the toppling Prajñā terrace and his disciple Huixiao's dream came together; knowing of himself that it was the sign of his passing, he told his disciples: "This phantom body of mine arises from conditions and has no own-nature. Now I shall go for a while to the pure quarter and afterwards roam the Lotus-Treasury World" 〔T51n2073 0163c27〕. Presently, on the night of the twenty-ninth of the tenth month, his colour unchanged, he lay down on his right side and died at Qingjing monastery, "in his sixty-seventh year" 〔T51n2073 0164a01〕; his birth year is reckoned back from that. In that same year, as he was about to depart and Fazang, then twenty-six, was still in lay life, he charged the two great worthies Daocheng and Bochen with him: "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〕. Of the commentaries this edition uses, one is from his hand and one from the hand of the man he charged them with.