高僧傳 6.50

6.50

晉義熙中，新陽縣虎災。縣有大社樹，下築神廟。左右居民以百數，遭虎死者夕有一兩。安嘗遊其縣，暮逗此村。民以畏虎，早閉閭。安徑之樹下，通夜坐禪。向曉，聞虎負人而至，投之樹北。見安，如喜如驚，跳伏安前。安為說法授戒，虎踞地不動，有頃而去。旦，村人追虎至樹下，見安大驚，謂是神人。遂傳之一縣，士庶宗奉。虎災由此而息，因改神廟，留安立寺，左右田園皆捨為眾業。

During the Yixi era of the Jin, Xinyang County suffered a plague of tigers. In the county stood a large shrine tree, beneath which a spirit shrine was built. The residents on either side were numbered in the hundreds, and those killed by tigers amounted to one or two every evening. Fa'an once traveled through this county, and at dusk stopped at this village. Out of fear of the tigers, the villagers had closed their gates early. Fa'an went straight under the tree and sat in dhyāna through the night. Toward dawn, he heard a tiger approaching carrying a human body, which it cast down to the north of the tree. Seeing Fa'an, appearing both joyful and startled, it leapt down and crouched before Fa'an. Fa'an preached the Dharma and administered the precepts to it; the tiger squatted on the ground without moving, and after a while departed. In the morning, the villagers pursued the tiger to beneath the tree and saw Fa'an; greatly astonished, they thought he was a divine being. This was then spread through the whole county, and both gentry and commoners venerated him. The tiger plague ceased from this point on; they consequently transformed the spirit shrine and retained Fa'an to establish a temple, donating the neighboring fields and orchards as monastic property.