法苑珠林 14.26

14.26

唐武德年中。邡州西南慈烏川有郝積者。素有信敬。見群鹿常在山上逐去還來。異之掘鹿所止處得石像。高一丈四尺許。移出川中村內。至今見存。自像出後群鹿因散。古老傳云。迦葉佛時所藏有四十軀。今雖兩現餘在山隱。其形如今玉華東鐵礦像相似。不可。治雘云。

During the Wude reign era of the Tang dynasty, in Ciwuchuan to the southwest of Fangzhou, there was a man named Hao Ji, who was by nature faithful and reverent. Seeing a herd of deer constantly gathered on the mountain, which returned whenever driven away, he found it extraordinary and excavated the place where the deer lingered. There he obtained a stone statue about fourteen feet tall. He moved it out to the village within the river valley, where it still exists today. After the statue emerged, the herd of deer dispersed. The elders handed down the tradition that forty statues were concealed here in the time of Kāśyapa Buddha. Although two have now appeared, the rest remain hidden in the mountains. Its form is similar to the iron-ore statue east of Yuhua today; it cannot be decorated with pigment, so they say.