法苑珠林 32.91

32.91

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.