法苑珠林 16.47

16.47

Furthermore, the Scripture Preached by the Buddha on the Time of Maitreya's Coming says: 'The Buddha said: When Maitreya Buddha is about to appear, within Jambudvīpa the lands, mountains, trees, grasses, and woods will all be scorched away. Now the land of Jambudvīpa has a circumference of six hundred thousand li. When Maitreya appears, the land of Jambudvīpa will be four hundred thousand li long from east to west, and three hundred and twenty thousand li wide from north to south. The earth will produce the five grains. Within the four seas there will be no mountain peaks, valleys, or ravines; the ground will be flat like a whetstone, and trees will grow tall and large. People will have few of the three poisons, and the populace will have many settlements. The city will be called Bārāṇasī. There will be a brāhmaṇa named Subrahma, who shall be Maitreya's father; his mother will be named Brahmavatī, and Maitreya shall be their son. Endowed with the primary and secondary marks, his body will be sixteen zhang tall. When born onto the city ground, his eyes will see through within ten thousand li, and the sunlight from his head will illuminate four thousand li. When Maitreya attains the Way and becomes a Buddha, he will sit beneath the Dragon Flower Tree. The tree will be forty li high and forty li broad (the Scripture on the Great Attainment of Buddhahood says its flowering branches are like dragon heads, hence it is called the Dragon Flower Tree; there is also an alternate tradition that says its seeds emerged from the dragon palace, hence it is called the Dragon Flower Tree). He will attain the Way on the eighth day of the fourth month when the morning star appears. Maitreya Buddha shall descend after sixty billion and sixty thousand remaining years (the rest is mostly the same as the preaching of the Scripture on the Attainment of Buddhahood).' Wang Xuance's Account of Missions to the Western Regions says: 'In the second year of the Xianqing era of the Tang, imperial envoys Wang Xuance and others were dispatched to the Western Regions to deliver the Buddha's kāṣāya robe. Arriving southwest of the kingdom of Nepāla, down into a pit east of the village of Bharadvāja, there was a pond of water and fire. If one took household fire to illuminate it, flames would immediately emerge from within the water on top of the pond. If one wished to extinguish it and poured water on it, its flames blazed all the more vigorously. The Han envoys once set up a cauldron over it and cooked rice until done. The envoy asked the king of that country, and the king replied to the envoy, saying: 'Once, when a stick was jabbed into it, it touched a golden casket. People were ordered to haul it out, but the more they hauled, the deeper it sank. Tradition says: This is the celestial crown gold for Maitreya Buddha's future attainment of the Way, and a fire dragon guards it. The fire of this pond is none other than the fire of the fire dragon.' Furthermore, the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra says: 'When Maitreya Bodhisattva was a layperson, his teacher was named Bāvari, who possessed three marks: first, the ūrṇā-hair mark between the eyebrows; second, the tongue covering the face mark; third, the concealed organ mark. Such marks as these—even when he was not a bodhisattva, he possessed all of them.'