諸經要集 3.12

3.12

Furthermore, the Great Sūtra of King Aśoka states: The eight kingdoms jointly divided the relics. King Ajātaśatru's allotted portion amounted to eighty-four thousand [measures], and he additionally obtained the Buddha's mustache and beard to bring back to his country. On the road, he encountered the dragon king Nanda-Upananda, who asked him for a share of the relics. When King Ajātaśatru would not grant it, [the dragon king] told him: 'I am a dragon king, able by force to destroy your country.' King Ajātaśatru was terrified and immediately gave him the Buddha's mustache and beard. The dragon returned to the foot of Mount Sumeru, eighty-four thousand leagues high, and built a crystal stupa underneath. King Ajātaśatru returned to his country, placed the relics in a purple-gold casket, fashioned lamps and torches that would burn for a thousand years, and erected a stupa to bury them amid the waters of five Gaṅgā sands. Later, Aśoka obtained his kingdom. The king took a consort who was eight feet tall, with hair that matched her stature, fully endowed with all the bodily marks. The king ordered a physiognomist to examine her, and the master said: 'She will bear for the king a golden-colored son.' The king forthwith appointed her second consort. Later, she became pregnant, and having completed ten months, the king had official business and went out on a tour. The queen mother was jealous, and so she devised an expedient means with others to eliminate her: she sought out a sow on the verge of giving birth, and said to the second consort: 'You are young and this is your first birth. You must not expose your face to look upon the sky.' She covered her face with a quilt. When the golden child was born, radiant light illuminated the palace. They stole him away and killed him, and immediately placed the piglet beside her. She then rebuked her, saying: 'You claimed that you would bear a golden-colored child for the king. Why have you given birth to a pig?' They then took a torture yoke, locked her up, and confined her to the rear garden to live on wild vegetables. When the king returned and heard of it, he was displeased. A long time afterward, the king went out to tour the garden; upon seeing her, he remembered her, and brought her back to the palace. The second consort gradually grew close to him again and recounted the full circumstances. Hearing this, the king was astounded and outraged, and forthwith put eighty-four thousand women of the inner quarters to death. Later, King Aśoka constructed a hell outside the city to punish convicts. Knowing that the king, having slain the consorts, was bound to fall into hell, Yaśa sent the bhikṣu Xiaosan to transform the king and cause him to awaken faith. The king asked the bhikṣu: 'For having killed eighty-four thousand women, can the guilt be expiated or not?' The man of the Way said: 'If you erect a stupa for each of them, and place a relic beneath each stupa, you will be freed from the guilt.' The king immediately sought out the relics of King Ajātaśatru. The father of the state chancellor, who was one hundred and twenty years old, led five hundred men to retrieve the original relics. The king was overjoyed, and forthwith distributed them to the ghosts and spirits, each returning to their respective domain, ordering that on a single day and at a single hour they should simultaneously erect eighty-four thousand stupa poles. The ghosts and spirits said: 'We are separated by many mountain ranges and cannot know each other's timing.' The king said: 'You need only return, prepare the dew-basins, secure the spires, and affix the bells; I will cause an asura to cover the sun with his hand, and all within the four quarters of the world will know the exact same hour.'