Sŏk Anham’s 釋安含 secular name was Kim. He was a grandson of the poet [who held the rank of] Ich‘an 伊飡.[514] Blessed with enlightenment at birth, he was by nature free of preconceptions and prejudices. He was resolute, and his magnanimity, profound and beautiful, was boundless. He traveled about as the fancy took him; he would observe local manners and make conversions on his own initiative. In the twenty-second year of King Chinp‘yŏng (600),[515] in the company of an eminent monk, Hyesuk 惠宿,[516] he planned to sail to Nip‘ojin 泥浦鎭, but they met with a storm near Sŏp Island 涉島[517] and were forced to return and moor their boat. The following year (601)[518] a royal decree permitted promising students to travel to China for study. The master was allowed to go; he sailed with a Silla envoy.
When he was received by the emperor, the latter was greatly pleased and installed him in the Ta-hsing-sheng monastery 大興聖寺.[519] Within a few months the master succeeded in understanding thoroughly the mysterious purport [of the Law]. Since the journey of ten stations from Mount Hua 華山 to Hsien-chang 仙掌.[520] is completed in less than a day, who hears the evening drum? Since the land of a thousand leagues between the Ch‘in Range 泰嶺[521] and Ti-kung 帝宮 is covered overnight, who awaits the morning bell?[522] In five years Anham had absorbed the meditation in ten stages[523] and also the profound meaning of the [Fa-hua] hsüan-i 法華玄義[524]. In the twenty-seventh year (605)[525] the master returned to his country with the monk P‘i-mo-chen-ti 毘摩眞諦 of Khotan[526] and the monk Nung-chia-t‘o 農伽陀.[527] This was the first time that foreign monks from Serindia[528] came directly to Kyerim 雞林.[529]
In the biography of Ŭisang 義湘, Ch‘oe Ch‘i-wŏn said: “Ŭisang was born in the forty-second year of the era kŏnbok of King Chinp‘yŏng (635).[530] In the same year the eastern sage, the master of the Law Anhong 安弘, came from T‘ang with two masters of the Tripitaka[531] from the West as well as two Chinese monks.” A note says: “P‘i-mo-chen-ti from Udyāna 鳥萇國[532] in northern India was forty-four years old. Nung-chia-t‘o was forty-six years old. Buddhasariga 佛佗儈伽 from the country of Mathurā 摩豆羅國[533] was also forty-six years old. They had traversed fifty-two countries before arriving in China. They finally reached Korea, where they stayed in the Hwangnyong monastery and translated the Chan-t‘an hsiang-huo hsing-kuang miao-nü ching 栴檀香火星光妙女經,[534] which was noted down by a native monk, Tamhwa 曇和.[535] Soon afterwards the Chinese monks memorialized the king, requesting permission to return [home]. The king granted them their leave and had them escorted on the trip.” From this account it is clear that Anhong must have been the master (Upādhyāya). According to the Annals of Silla 新羅本紀, however, in the thirty-seventh year of King Chinhŭng (576) Anhong went to Ch‘en in order to seek the Law and returned [1022a] with two foreign monks, including P‘i-mo-chen-ti.[536] [Anhong] brought back the Lankāvatāra[537] and Śrīmālā [simhanāda] sūtras 勝鬘經[538] and also Buddha relics. But a span of almost fifty years separates the end of the reign of King Chinhŭng from the era kŏnbok of King Chinp‘yŏng. How could this be so, when the three masters of the Tripitaka had not even been there yet? Perhaps Anham and Anhong were actually two different persons; however, the [three] masters of the Tripitaka who accompanied them bore the same names. Since the names are the same, I have written their biographies in combination. As for the [three] masters of the Tripitaka from Serindia, we do not know whether they stayed or departed, or how they ended their Lives.
After the master returned to his country, he composed a book of prognostication, [539] the prints of which subsequently fell into disorder, making it difficult to guess who the author was. The meaning [of the prognostication] is equally obscure, and the reader finds it difficult to understand. For instance we find sentences like "the bird ulūka[540] . . . disperses,” or “the first princess will be buried in Trāyastrimśa.”[541] As for entries like “the defeat of a large army stretching a thousand leagues,” “the completion of the Four-Deva monastery,” “the time of the prince’s return to his native land,” or “the year of prosperity under a powerful sovereign,” though these are evasive and remote prophecies, they sound as if he [the author] had seen their fulfillment with his very own eyes, without a single error.
On the twenty-third day of the ninth month of the ninth year of Queen Sŏndŏk 善德女王[542] (October 13, 640), Anham died in the Mansŏn monastery (bodhi-manda) 萬善道場[543] at the age of sixty-two. In the same month a returning envoy from China met on the way the master of the Law, who was sitting squarely on the green waves, joyfully heading westward. This is truly what is meant by “soaring into the sky as if ascending a stairway and walking on the water as if treading on the ground.”
A certain Hallim scholar, Sŏl 薛,[544] by royal order compiled an epitaph whose inscription reads: “The queen was buried in Trāyastrimśa, and the Deva monastery was built. A strange bird cried at night, and a mass of soldiers died at dawn. The prince crossed the passes and had an audience with an emperor. He was beyond the frontier for five years, and he returned when he was thirty. The ups and downs of life are like a turning wheel. How can one avoid the distinction between self and not-self? At the age of sixty-two Anham died at the Mansŏn monastery. On the sea the returning envoy met the master, who was sitting squarely on the waves and disappeared toward the West.”[545] (Ten logographs on the slab are eroded and four or five more are unclear. The author takes what is legible and reconstructs the text by surmise.) This was probably nothing more than the trace of the deceased.
The eulogy says: The master’s supernatural power (abhijñā)[546] and deliverance and freedom of movement were only a few signs of the great bodhisattva. The ordinary pen or mouth cannot exhaust them. After going to China and meeting the three monks from Serindia, he opened up a fountain of truth. Blowing the conch of the Law and showering the rain of the Law, his teaching, like a river, moistened the dried corner of the seashore. Indeed, he was a sage who propagated the Law.[547] A logograph [like] o 鳥, after being copied three times, can become ma 馬.[548] I suspect that between ham 含 and hong 弘 one or the other must be a mistake.