法苑珠林 32.91

32.91

高齊時。有釋僧護。守道直心不求慧業。願造丈八石像。咸怪其言。後於寺北谷中。見一臥石可長丈八。乃雇匠營造。向經一周。面復粗了。而背猶著地。以六具拗舉之如初不動。經夜至旦忽然自翻。即就營訖移置佛堂。晉州陷日像汗流地。周兵入齊燒諸佛寺。此像獨不變色。又欲倒之。人牛六十頭挽不動。忽有異僧以瓦木土塹壘而圍之。須臾便了。失僧所在。像後降夢信心者日。吾患指痛。其人寤而視焉。乃木傷其二指也。遂即補之。開皇十年有盜像幡蓋者。夢丈八人。入室責之。賊遂慚悑悔而謝焉。其像現在。

During the Northern Qi, there was the monk Shi Senghu. He upheld the Way with an upright mind and did not seek after wisdom. He vowed to create an eighteen-foot stone image, and everyone thought his words strange. Later, in the valley north of the temple, he saw a recumbent stone about eighteen feet long, so he hired artisans to carve it. When about a year had passed, the face was roughly completed, but the back was still resting on the ground. Using six levers, they attempted to lift it, but it remained motionless as before. After a night had passed, in the morning it suddenly turned over on its own. They then proceeded to finish it and moved it into the Buddha hall. On the day Jinzhou fell, the image sweated profusely onto the ground. When the Zhou soldiers entered Qi and burned the various Buddhist temples, this image alone did not change its color. They also wished to pull it down, but sixty men and oxen pulled it without moving it. Suddenly there was a wondrous monk who surrounded it by stacking tiles, wood, and earth-rammed trenches; in a moment it was finished, and the monk's whereabouts were lost. Later, the image sent a dream to a faithful person, saying: "I suffer from pain in my fingers." When that person awoke and inspected it, wood had indeed injured two of its fingers; he thereupon repaired them. In the tenth year of the Kaihuang reign (590 CE), someone stole the image's banners and canopies, and dreamed of an eighteen-foot person who entered his room and reproached him. The thief was then ashamed and frightened, repented, and apologized. That image exists at present.