佛祖統紀 26.41

26.41

Tanyi was a native of Yuhang. He initially entered Mount Lu to rely upon Master Yuan, and later went to Guanzhong to see Kumārajīva. Returning east to Kuaiji, he entered Mount Qinwang and recited the Lotus Sūtra. In the twelfth year, he moved the great being Samantabhadra to transform into the body of a woman wearing multicolored garments, carrying a bamboo basket with a white pig and two roots of garlic. She came before the master and said: "I entered the mountains to gather fern shoots (in the text above, caifu refers to the five colors, with cai [彩] being the common form; below, caiwei means to gather, with cai [採] being the common form). The sun has already sloped down, and wolves and dholes are everywhere; returning home, there is no way for me to survive, so I dare to ask to stay for a night." The master firmly refused her. The woman again wept and plead unceasingly, so he allowed her to stay on a straw bed. In the middle of the night, she cried out with abdominal pain, asking the master to massage her. The master declined on the grounds that upholding the precepts does not allow touching with the hand. The woman cried out even more intensely, so the master wrapped his monk's staff in cloth and massaged her from a distance. The next day, the woman used her multicolored garments to transform into auspicious clouds, the pig turned into a white elephant, and the garlic transformed into a pair of lotuses, soaring up into the sky. She said to the master: "I am the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra, who came specifically to test you." The commandery administrator Meng Yi reported this to the imperial court, and an imperial decree ordered the construction of Fahua Monastery (now Tianyi Monastery). Earlier, on Mount Yuhang, the monk Fazhi regularly recited the Lotus Sūtra. A pheasant nested beside his hut; it would soar and alight at the corner of his seat as if listening and receiving it. This went on for seven years. One day, it suddenly looked emaciated. Fazhi said: "Because you can listen to the sūtra, you will surely be reborn in the human realm." The next morning, the pheasant died, and he immediately buried it. At night, he dreamed of a young boy who bowed and said: "Because of listening to the sūtra, I have escaped the feathered species, and am now reborn in the Wang family in front of the mountain." Later, when the family held a vegetarian feast, Zhi arrived at their gate just then. The child said: "My upādhyāya has come." Zhi stroked him and said: "You are my pheasant child." Untying his clothes and looking under his armpit, there were three pheasant down feathers. At age seven, he was made to enter the mountain to leave home; at age sixteen, his head was shaved. Because he had down feathers under his armpit, he was consequently named Yi (Wings).