ABSTRACT
Fu Jian of the State of Former Qin had great military ambition and in 378 CE, sent armies to attack Xiangyang as the first step of his expansion to the south. When Xiangyang fell in 379 CE, Dao An was taken to Chang'an, the seat of the Former Qin court, where he was venerated for his great learning. The author saw the foreign monk Dharmadhara reciting the Abhidharma. 'Abhidharma' is a general term referring to the philosophical and scholastic literature contained in the Abhidharma-Pitakas of the Indian Buddhist schools. It is both a distillation and elaboration on the doctrines presented in the sutra literature. In particular, foreign monk Dharmadhara was good at reciting the vinaya. So the author asked the monk Zhu Fonian from Liangzhou to write down the Fan version, the monk Dao Yan to render it into Chinese, and the monk Hui Chang to record the translation in writing.
