法苑珠林 13.20

13.20

案南齊王琰冥祥記云。漢明帝夢見神人。形垂二丈。身黃金色項佩日光。以問群臣。或對曰。西方有神。其號曰佛。形如陛下所夢。得無是乎。於是發使天竺。寫致經像。表之中夏。自天子王侯咸敬事之。聞人死精神不滅。莫不懼然自失。初使者蔡愔將西域沙門迦葉摩騰等。齎優填王畫釋迦倚像。帝重之。如夢所見也。乃遣畫工圖之數本。於南宮清涼臺及高陽門顯節壽陵上供養。又於白馬寺壁畫千乘萬騎繞塔三匝之。像如諸傳備載。

According to Wang Yan's Mingxiang ji of the Southern Qi: Emperor Ming of the Han dreamed of a divine person, nearly twenty feet tall, his body yellow-gold in color, with sunlight adorning the back of his neck. He asked his ministers about it, and someone replied, 'In the West there is a deity whose title is Buddha. His form is like what Your Majesty dreamed; could it not be him?' Thereupon he dispatched envoys to India to copy and bring back scriptures and images to make them manifest in the Central Kingdom. From the Son of Heaven down to princes and marquises, all revered and served him. Hearing that when a person dies the spiritual consciousness does not perish, none were not awestruck and lost in thought. Initially, the envoy Cai Yin led the Western Region śramaṇa Kāśyapa Mātaṅga and others, who brought along an image of Śākya leaning, painted for King Udayana. The emperor prized it, as it was just like what he had seen in his dream. He then dispatched court painters to copy several versions of it to make offerings upon the Qingliang Terrace of the Southern Palace and the Gao Yang Gate at the Xianjie Longevity Tomb. Furthermore, on the walls of White Horse Temple, paintings were made of a thousand chariots and ten thousand cavalrymen circumambulating the stūpa three times, the likenesses of which are fully recorded in the various chronicles.