佛祖統紀 47.8

47.8

In the first month of the third year, the Jin barbarians entered the Huai region. The Emperor visited Jiankang. In the eighth month, the Emperor departed from Jiankang. In the eleventh month, the barbarian chieftain Wuzhu Zongbi took Hangzhou. Zhu Bi, magistrate of Qiantang, led archers to battle him, but was outmatched and fled to Tianzhu Mountain; the barbarians suddenly arrived, and he was killed. Previously, when Dharma Master Dexian, known as Yuanying (fourth generation under Ciyun), was a child, a physiognomist told him: 'One day you will face disaster with officialdom; only by leaving the household can it be avoided.' Thereupon he shaved his head and went to Lingshan, studying under Huijing, and ultimately succeeded to his abbot's seat. Approaching death, he said to his disciples: 'During my life I escaped disaster through the power of the Way, but after my death there will still be residual karma.' When his disciples made a statue of him for the Patriarchs' Hall, they protected its neck with iron. When the barbarians arrived, their chieftain, the Pearl King, came to the Patriarchs' Hall of Lingshan. All the other statues stood, but only the Master's statue did not rise. The chieftain in anger ordered him beheaded; because the neck had iron, it could not be harmed. Thereupon they piled firewood filling the doorway and set fire to burn it, yet when the firewood burned out, the building was as before. Some saw a thousand divine monks holding pitchers and pouring water, appearing and vanishing in mid-air. The barbarian troops were terrified and withdrew. Earlier, when Dharma Master Rujing presided over Upper Tianzhu, Wuzhu entered the territory; the master had a premonitory dream knowing that this mountain's calamity could not be avoided, and warned the assembly to flee. When the barbarians arrived, someone said they could be greeted with ritual, so they struck the bell to assemble the crowd; the barbarians suspected resistance, so their following soldiers looted extensively and set fire to the monastery. In the twelfth month, on the day jimao (the sixth), the Emperor visited Mingzhou. On renwu (the ninth), he halted at Dinghai and boarded an imperial tower ship. On guisi (the twentieth), the barbarians took Yuezhou. On guimao (the thirtieth), Zhang Jun, Pacification Commissioner of Eastern Zhejiang, fought the barbarians at the West Gate of Mingzhou. Seeing that the local populace wove many mats, Jun sent soldiers to collect them and covered the roads with multiple layers of mats. When the barbarian cavalry trampled on the mats, their horses all slipped and fell; seizing the moment, he attacked swiftly and cut off many heads (this is transmitted by local elders, differing from the official dynastic history).