法苑珠林 14.26

14.26

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.