律相感通傳 1.62

1.62

He replied: “When the Jin house moved south, Guo Pu, a man of wide learning, surveyed the regional maps and said, ‘This Jing-Chu was formerly a royal capital.’ He wished to establish it in Xiazhou, but hesitated because it was too close to the mountains, so it received the designation Yidu. Going down to Songzi, the terrain had the appearance and posture of a capital city, so they dug a pit and weighed the earth; disliking that it was too light, they returned the earth to the original pit, but the earth would not fill it. They also saw a small hall surrounded by molded images, and said, ‘This land already belongs to the Three Jewels,’ so they stopped. Since ancient times, the royal aura of Jinling had not ended up to that time, and was certainly destined to last for three hundred years; so they made Jianye their capital. Nevertheless, in this place they established Hedong Commandery, moving the four clans of Pei, Liu, Xue, and Du to reside there. The land lay in a bend of the Yangtze River, resembling the river bend of Puzhou; hence it has the name Hedong. As for the Eastern and Western Monasteries: when Fu Jian attacked the Jin, the northern bank of Jingzhou was completely lost to the Qin. At that time, Huan Chong was governor of Jingzhou; he invited Dharma Master Yi across the river, building the Eastern Monastery to house the monks of Changsha Monastery, and the Western Monastery to house the monks of Siceng Monastery. After Fu Jian was defeated, the lands on the northern bank returned to the Jin house, and the monks of Changsha and Siceng each returned to their original monasteries; the Eastern and Western Monasteries were then broadly expanded based on their old sites. From the Jin, Song, Qi, Liang, down to the Chen dynasty, the assembly of monks regularly numbered in the tens of thousands. At the end of the Chen and the beginning of the Sui, there were 3,500 famous monks and several thousand pure men. The hall was twelve bays, with only two pillars spanning the beam of fifty-five feet; the brackets were piled up, a grand spectacle of the realm; it was built by Dharma Master Yi, a disciple sent by Shi Dao'an who filled the heavens. From the Jin to the Tang, there was never any decay. In front of the hall were four iron caldrons, each holding over ten hu, used to plant lotuses. The pagoda in front of the hall was built by King Yiji of Qiao in the Song. The molded images inside the pagoda and the Maitreya image in the eastern hall were all made by artisans from the Trāyastriṃśa Heaven; in the western hall, the many gold and bronze images, jeweled canopies, flying celestials, pearl banners, and flower pendants were all made by devas of the Four Heavenly Kings. The monastic assembly within the monastery, counting both residents and guests, exceeded ten thousand people. Among those prominent in lecturing and exposition, fifty-three persons had attained the holy fruit, each leading a thousand monks; the other junior Dharma masters were over five hundred persons. There were forty vinaya masters of the Daśabhāṇavāra, nine of whom had attained the holy fruit. There were over eight hundred meditation masters of the Mahāyāna and Hīnayāna, among whom two hundred and forty-four had attained the holy fruit. The disciples were solemn and disciplined, beyond full description. According to the regulatory rules established by the monastery, those who recited sixty sheets of scriptures were exempted from the duties of the karmadāna. Those who recited the Lotus Sūtra through were exempted from the duties of the direct superintendent. The monastery dormitories were five tiers high, all with seven rafters. There were ten branch compounds, large and small; the Pratyutpanna and Samantabhadra compounds were the most magnificently adorned. In every summer retreat there were regularly a thousand people; the rooms and surrounding colonnades and corridors of the monastery amounted to nearly ten thousand bays. The monastery opened three gates in two tiers, seven bays with two flanking halls; the hall buildings were laid out horizontally and not built one behind another, proportioned to the land to ensure long-lasting stability. Therefore, for over three hundred years down to the present, the hall buildings have suffered no decay. Among the great monasteries of the eastern river region, only this one was so lofty; shining upon the rivers and plains, it truly deserved to be called an imposing spectacle.”