法苑珠林 13.20

13.20

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.