釋氏稽古略 3.164

3.164

Ullambana: In the bing-wu year, the first year of Dali, on the ren-wu day of the seventh month, the Emperor held an Ullambana assembly in the palace. He set up seats for the seven imperial ancestors from Gaozu and Taizong downward, erected huge banners, and inscribed the imperial titles of each atop them. They were welcomed from the Imperial Ancestral Temple into the inner bodhimaṇḍa. On that day, the military guards were drawn up, and the hundred officials bowed in welcome at the Guangshun Gate and formed an escorting retinue. From then on, it became an annual custom. On the gui-wei day, lingzhi mushrooms grew in two chambers of the Imperial Ancestral Temple. The Emperor composed a poem praising it, and all the officials harmonized with it (see the Old History of the Tang). A sūtra states: "The Buddha's great disciple, the Venerable Maudgalyāyana, was foremost in supernatural powers. When his mother passed away, she fell among the hungry ghosts. Maudgalyāyana went and saw her, and he reported it to the Buddha to rescue and liberate her. The Buddha instructed that on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, the day of the monks' Pravāraṇā, abundant vegetarian offerings should be prepared to make offerings to the Buddha, provide a vegetarian feast to the saṅgha, and chant the various sūtras; only then did his mother escape from the hungry ghosts." In the ding-wei year, the [second] year of Dali, in the seventh month, Yu Chao'en, Commissioner of Military Affairs, memorialized to turn an estate previously bestowed on him into the Zhangjing Monastery in order to aid the posthumous blessings of the Empress Dowager.