法苑珠林 14.43

14.43

宣師感通記。問天人云。益州成都多寶石佛者。何代時像從地踊出。答曰。蜀都元基青城山上。今之成都大海之地。昔迦葉佛時。有人於西耳河造之。擬多寶佛全身相也。在西耳河鷲山寺。有成都人往彼興易。請像將還。至今多寶寺處為海神蹋船所沒。初取像人見海神子岸上游。謂是山芝遂即殺之。因爾神瞋覆沒。人像俱溺。同在一船。其多寶舊在鷲頭山寺。古基尚在。仍有一塔。常有光明令向彼土。道由郎州過。大小不算。三千餘里方達西耳河。河大闊或百里或五百里。中有山洲。亦有古寺。經像尚存無僧住。經同此文。時聞鍾聲。百姓殷實。每年二時供養古塔。塔如戒壇。三重石砌。上有覆釜其數極多。彼土諸人但言神冡。每發光明。人以蔬食祭之求其福祚也。其地西北去嶲州二千餘里。問去天竺非遠。往往有至彼者（自下云云）。至晉時有僧於此地見土墳。隨出隨除終不可平。後見坼開深怪其爾。乃深掘丈餘獲像及人骨在船。其髏骨肘脛悉皆麁大數倍過於今人。即迦葉佛時閻浮人壽二萬歲時人也。今時劫減命促人小固其常然不可怪也。初出之時牽曳難得。弟子化為老人指揮方便。須臾至周滅法暫隱。到隋重興更復出之。蜀人但知其靈從地而出。亦不測其根源。見其花趺有多寶字。因遂名焉。又名多寶寺。又問。多寶字是其隷書。出於亡秦之代。如何迦葉佛時已有神州書耶。答亡秦李斯隷書。此乃近代。遠承隷書之興。興於古佛之世。見今南洲四面千有餘洲莊嚴閻浮一方百有餘國。文字言音同今唐國。但以海路遼遠動數十萬里。重譯莫傳。故使此方封守株柱。不足怪也。師不聞乎。梁顧野王。大學之太博也。周訪字源出沒不定。故玉篇序云。有開春申君墓得其銘文。皆是隷字。檢春申是周武六國同時。隷文則非吞併之日也。此國篆隷諸書尚有茫昧。寧知迦葉佛時之事。史非其耳目之所聞見也。

In Master [Dao]xuan's Gantong ji (Record of Miraculous Responses), he asked a celestial being, saying, "Regarding the stone Buddha of Prabhūtaratna in Chengdu, Yizhou, during which era was this image made that surged up from the earth?" He answered, saying, "The capital of Shu originally sat atop Mount Qingcheng; what is now Chengdu was a place of a great sea. Formerly, in the time of Kāśyapa Buddha, someone fashioned it at the Xi'er River to represent the full-body image of Prabhūtaratna Buddha. It was at Gṛdhrakūṭa Temple on the Xi'er River. A person from Chengdu went there to trade and requested the image to bring it back. When he reached the site of the present Duobao (Prabhūtaratna) Temple, the boat was sunk by a sea spirit who trampled upon it. Earlier, the man who took the image saw the sea spirit's son sporting on the shore; thinking he was a mountain mushroom, he immediately killed him. Because of this, the spirit was enraged and overturned the boat, so that both man and image drowned together in the one vessel. That [image of] Prabhūtaratna was formerly at Gṛdhrakūṭa Temple; the ancient foundation is still there, and there is also a pagoda that constantly radiates light, bidding one toward that land. The road passes through Langzhou; regardless of great or small [distances], it is over three thousand li before reaching the Xi'er River. The river is very wide, sometimes a hundred li, sometimes five hundred li. In the midst of it are mountainous islands, and there are also ancient temples where the scriptures and images still survive, but no monks dwell there. The scriptures are the same as this text. From time to time the sound of bells is heard. The common people are prosperous; twice every year they make offerings to the ancient pagoda. The pagoda is like an ordination platform, with three tiers of stone masonry, above which are inverted-caldron [stupas] in very great number. The people of that land only call it a divine tomb; it constantly radiates light, and people sacrifice to it with vegetarian food to pray for blessings and prosperity. That place lies over two thousand li northwest of Xizhou. When asked, it is not far from India; from time to time there are people who reach there (from here down, etc., etc.). In the Jin dynasty, a monk saw an earthen mound at this place; as soon as he leveled it, it rose again, and in the end it could not be flattened. Later he saw it split open, and finding this exceedingly strange, he dug down over ten feet and recovered the image as well as human bones in the boat. The skulls, forearms, and shins were all coarse and large, several times greater than those of people today. These were precisely the people of the time of Kāśyapa Buddha, when human lifespan in Jambudvīpa was twenty thousand years. In the present era of the kalpa of decline, life is short and people are small; this is a fixed norm and should not be wondered at. When it was first unearthed, it was difficult to drag out; a disciple transformed into an old man and directed the means [to raise it]. In an instant [it was done]. When the [Northern] Zhou suppressed the Dharma, it was temporarily hidden away; upon the revival under the Sui, it was brought out again. The people of Shu only know of its divine efficacy in emerging from the earth, but they do not fathom its origins. Seeing the characters 'Duobao' (Prabhūtaratna) on its lotus pedestal, they subsequently named it accordingly, and also named it Duobao Temple." [Daoxuan] further asked, "The characters 'Duobao' are in clerical script (lishu), which originated during the fallen Qin dynasty. How could there already have been the script of the Divine Continent (China) in the time of Kāśyapa Buddha?" He answered, "The clerical script of Li Si of the fallen Qin belongs to recent times; tracing back the remote rise of clerical script, it arose in the era of ancient Buddhas. Behold, among the more than one thousand islands surrounding the Southern Continent (Jambudvīpa) that adorn the Jambudvīpa quarter, and its more than one hundred countries, the writing and spoken sounds are identical to those of the present Tang realm. It is only because the sea routes are vast and distant, easily reaching hundreds of thousands of li, that multiple translations could not be transmitted; thus this realm remained entrenched in its stubborn obstinacy. It is not to be wondered at. Has the Master not heard? Gu Yewang of the Liang was a Great Erudite of the Imperial Academy; he investigated the sources of characters and their fluctuating appearances. Hence, the preface to the Yupian says that when someone opened the tomb of Lord Chunshen, they obtained inscriptions from it that were all in clerical characters. Upon examination, Lord Chunshen was contemporary with King Wu of Zhou and the Six States; the clerical script was thus not of the days of the Qin annexation. The seal and clerical scripts of this country are still obscure; how could one know of the events of the time of Kāśyapa Buddha? The histories are not based on what their ears and eyes have heard and seen."