釋迦方志 2.105

2.105

On the eighth day of the second month in the third year of Ningkang under Emperor Xiaowu of the Eastern Jin, the śramaṇa Shi Dao'an, whose illustrious virtue was brilliantly renowned throughout the realm, cast a sixteen-foot image of Amitāyus west of the outer wall of Xiangyang. At the end of winter the following year, when its adornment was completed, the image walked westward up Mount Wan. At that time the local villagers marveled and sighed, escorting it back to its original temple; that same evening, it emerged again to stand at the temple gate. The Inspector Xi Hui then renamed it Golden Image Temple. In the third year of Putong under Emperor Wu of the Liang, the emperor cast a great gilded bronze lotus pedestal, six feet high and about ten feet wide, in the Jianxing Garden, ordering Liu Xiaoyi to compose an inscription and erect a stele praising its virtue. When Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou eradicated the Dharma, in the third year of Jiande, Wang Kang, Duke of Taiyuan, served as Inspector of Jingzhou. His subordinate commander, Zhangsun Zhe, did not believe in the Buddha-Dharma and first wished to destroy it, dispatching more than a hundred men to tie ropes around its neck and pull it, but it did not move at all. Zhe thought they were not applying strength and beat them with a cane, ordering them to pull, but it remained motionless as before. He added three hundred and then five hundred more; only then did it topple with a roar that shook the earth. He immediately ordered it smashed, crying out loudly in self-satisfaction. He then galloped on horseback intending to report to the inspector, but after barely a hundred paces, he crashed to the ground, lost his speech, stared blankly ahead, and died shortly thereafter. Monastics and laity cheered in satisfaction. When destroying the statue, an inscription attached within the drapery hanging inverted under its armpit was found, which read: "In the nineteenth year of the Taiyuan era of the Jin, the year being *jiawu*, the bhikṣu Dao'an made one eighteen-foot golden image west of the outer wall of Xiangyang. After three more *jiawu* cycles, one hundred eighty years, this image shall be destroyed." Calculating and comparing the years and months, they all matched completely. Truly we know that the "Hand-Marked Sage" was certainly not empty in his words! Yet inferring from facts: Dao'an was in the third year of Taiyuan, the year *wuyin*—which is the fifteenth year of Fu Jian's Jianyuan era—when he was captured to the land of Qin along with Zhu Xu and Xi Yu. In the tenth year of Taiyuan, he passed away in Guanzhong. Ten years after his passing was the year *jiawu*. Looking simply across the years, the numbers appear discrepant; but foreseeing what had not yet occurred across three cycles of *jiawu*, he took the ultimate number of the great cycle, further revealing the all-pervading holiness of the "Hand-Marked [Sage]."