Yancong (彦琮,557–610) of the Sui period participated in the translation project at the Daxingshansi Temple in Chang’an and the translation center in Luoyang. That is why he was recorded in the translators chapter of the Supplement to the Bibliographies of Eminent Monks. He was however not actually responsible for translation. He just wrote a preface and had it attached it to the translated scriptures, because what he wrote is wonderfully brilliant and recorded as being respected by people in Chang’an.
According to my previous surveys, Yancong wrote 25 kinds of preface. I also determined that he gathered those preface together as prefaces of new translated scriptures. Unfortunately, all these prefaces are lost.
Fortunately, however, the Hebu Jinguanming jing (in its Yuan and Ming versions) exists. There are two versions of this preface, with different contents. One is a printed book recorded in the Buddhist canon, the other is a manuscript kept in the Shanghai Library. While their contents differ, both have been regarded as Yancong’s work.
In this paper, as a result of analyzing the contents and writing style of these two versions of the preface, I argue that the manuscript in the Shanghai Library is truly Yancong’s work.
