法苑珠林 100.409

100.409

烏仗那國舊都達麗羅川中有大伽藍。側有刻木慈氏像。高百餘尺。金容晃曜。靈鑑潛通。有阿羅漢名末田底迦。携挈匠人。昇覩史多天。親觀妙色。三返畢功。有此像來。法流東漸。逮于炎漢。明帝內記云。永平七年。歲在甲子。秋九月晝星西見。帝夢神人身長丈六。面作真金色。頂有日月光明。飛行自在出沒無礙。曉問臣吏。莫不咸慶。太子舍人燉煌傅毅奏稱。臣聞外國淨飯王太子。號悉達多。捨轉輪王位。出家成道名釋迦文。陛下夢警。將無感也。即勅使西尋過四十餘國。屆舍衛都。僧云。佛久滅度。遂抄聖教六十萬五千言。以白馬馱還。所經嶮隘餘畜皆死。白馬轉強嘉其神異。雒陽立白馬寺焉。貝葉真文西流為始。佛光背日東照為初。於是聲教霑洽馳騖福林。風猷鼓扇載驅上國。源派樞要寔建此晨。周書亦云。丈六身似赤銅色以為別爾。誠感未純。教來流及。

In the valley of Dalila, the former capital of the country of Uḍḍiyāna, there is a great saṃghārāma. Beside it stands a carved wooden image of Maitreya, over a hundred feet high; its golden countenance gleams radiantly, and its divine perspicacity invisibly communicates [with all]. There was an arhat named Madhyāntika who took craftsmen and ascended to Tuṣita Heaven to observe directly [Maitreya's] wondrous form, completing the work after three journeys. Ever since this image came to be, the flow of the Dharma has gradually spread eastward. Coming down to the radiant Han dynasty, the Inner Record of Emperor Ming states: 'In the seventh year of the Yongping reign (64 CE), the year being jiazi, in the ninth month of autumn, stars were seen in the west during the day. The emperor dreamed of a divine man sixteen feet tall, whose face was of true golden colour, with the radiance of the sun and moon at his crown, flying freely and appearing and vanishing without impediment. At dawn he inquired of his officials, and none did not rejoice together. Fu Yi, the Household Provisioner to the Crown Prince from Dunhuang, presented a memorial stating: "Your subject has heard that abroad there is the crown prince of King Śuddhodana, named Siddhārtha, who renounced the throne of a cakravartin, left the household, and attained the Way, named Śākyamuni. In Your Majesty's dream admonition, could there not have been a sympathetic resonance?" Thereupon envoys were decreed to search westward through more than forty countries, arriving at the capital of Śrāvastī. The monks said: "The Buddha passed into extinction long ago." They then transcribed six hundred and five thousand words of the sacred teachings and returned with them packed on a white horse. Along the dangerous passes they traversed, the other animals all died, but the white horse grew increasingly strong; admiring its divine anomaly, they established the Baima Temple (White Horse Temple) in Luoyang.' The western transmission of the true texts on palm leaves began here; the radiance of the Buddha shining eastward against the sun was first seen here. Thereupon the auditory teachings moistly spread, galloping through the groves of merit; the exemplary ways were stirred up, driving toward the premier realm. The fountainhead and crux of this was indeed established on that very morning. The Book of Zhou also states: 'A sixteen-foot body, resembling the colour of red copper, was what distinguished him.' Sincere sympathetic resonance was not yet pure, yet the teachings came and spread.