三寶感應要略錄 3.33

3.33

After the Buddha's nirvāṇa, according to the accounts of the kings of various states, having heard the Buddha explain the dimensions of the vajrāsana, they set up two statues of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, marking the boundaries to the north and south, facing east and west. It is heard from the elders: 'When the bodies of these bodhisattva statues sink and disappear, the Buddha-Dharma will come to an end.' Now the statue at the southern corner has already sunk past its chest. Dharma Master Xuanzang set out for the Western Regions in the eighth month of the jichou year, the third year of the Zhenguan reign of the great Tang emperor [629 CE]. The Buddha, at the age of seventy-nine, in the renshen year, the fifty-second year of King Mu of Zhou, entered extinction in the middle of the night on the fifteenth day of the second month. Up to the year [Xuanzang] set out, it was 1,578 years.