佛祖統紀 41.4

41.4

In the ninth month of the first year of Yongtai, a cast bronze-gilt Buddha image was completed. At the Guangshun Gate, [the Emperor] led the hundred officials in making prostrations. In the tenth month, Tibetan invaders pressed close to the capital. [The Emperor] ordered two carriages of the Humane Kings Sūtra to be brought out from the palace and sent to Ximing and other monasteries. An imperial decree instructed Tripiṭaka Master Amoghavajra to set up one hundred high seats to lecture on the sūtra. The Emperor went in person to offer incense and pay reverent homage. Soon after, the invaders were subdued. An imperial decree stated: 'The precious Humane Kings Sūtra honors the protection of the state in its meaning. The translations made in earlier eras were not completely coherent in their principle.' Thereupon he ordered Tripiṭaka Master Amoghavajra and the śramaṇas Feixi, Liangbi, and others to retranslate it in the South Peach Garden of the Daming Palace. The Emperor read it in person, stating: 'Although the principle of the two texts—the new and the old—accords, the literary meaning translated in the new text is exceedingly comprehensive.' He then personally composed a preface and granted Amoghavajra the honorary title of Specially Advanced Chief of the Court of State Ceremonial. An imperial decree [also] stated: 'Renunciant śramaṇas venerably dwell among the Three Jewels. Let all governmental offices throughout the realm be forbidden from beating or humiliating monks and nuns.' An imperial order directed Daxingshan Monastery to construct an Equal Platform of the Precepts and appointed ten Great Virtues to oversee the platform. The Emperor dreamed that the Sixth Patriarch asked to return his robe and bowl to his mountain. He then ordered Liu Chongjing to respectfully bear them on his head and take them back, decreeing that Yang Jian, the prefect of Shaozhou, enshrine them with proper ritual. An imperial decree instructed one hundred śramaṇas to perform recitation practices within the forbidden palace, termed the Palace Bodhimaṇḍa; they rode horses when entering and leaving, and were supplied with grain by the revenue office. Śramaṇa Chonghui of Zhangjing competed in magical arts with a Daoist and claimed victory; he was imperially granted the purple robe. An imperial order directed that in the various abhiṣeka bodhimaṇḍas of Vajrabodhi, fourteen śramaṇas be chosen to recite the Uṣṇīṣa Dhāraṇī continuously for the sake of the state. Tripiṭaka Master Cunda, Defender of the State, died at the age of six hundred.