Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch
RASHKB and author
Vol. 1 (1961)
ISSN 1991-7295
91
you will be one of his vanguards. Well, I think I can do something for you in this matter. He ordered Chin-hsia to bring two stalks of lotus and three lotus leaves to him, and with them he made a human shape on the ground, using the stems to represent the joints and articulation of the bones, and set the seed of a golden pill in the middle. He employed his divine power and spoke the magic spells while he pushed No-cha's souls toward the lotuses, and suddenly there sprang up a young No-cha who was handsome and full of vitality, with a rosy complexion, red lips, intelligent eyes and was sixteen feet tall. Thus was No-cha reincarnated from lotuses. (Ch.14)
As I have said, in chuan 3, Lun-1 P'in (Discourses) of the Ta-fang-pien-fu Pao-ên Ching there is a Buddhist legend which can be summarized as follows:
The king of Varanasi (*) married Lady Doe-mother who conceived and gave birth to a lotus which was cast into a pond. The lotus then grew five hundred leaves and under each leaf a boy was born. When these five hundred boys grew up they became giants, each of whom was strong and brave enough to fight against a thousand men single-handed. These brothers, from the first one to the four hundred and ninety-ninth all forsook their noble life and became Buddhist priests. The youngest brother attained the fruition of a Pratyeka-Buddha ninety days later and, manifesting his miraculous powers, he preached the dharma for the benefit of his parents.
This can be cited as an illustration that the story about reincarnation from a lotus had a religious background. In the paragraph in chuan 2 of the Wu-têng Hui-yüan I have quoted, the last sentence of the text is “現本身,運大神通,為父母說法” (manifesting his original body and by his miraculous powers preached the dharma for the benefit of his parents), and now in this sutra the corresponding sentence is “...” which would make no difference in translation. We may consult Ch.27, "King Resplendent and Buddha Thunder-voice" (¥2) of the Lotus Sutra, in which the two sons of the king, Pure Treasury (*) and Pure Eyes (), worrying about their father's attachment to the heretical teaching which deviated from the right course, revealed to him some of their supernatural powers (...) and brought him to faith and discernment.3 So we may believe the original story that No-cha “rending himself asunder, gave his flesh back to his mother and his bones to his father”.
3 "The Lotus of the Wonderful Law" (Saddharma Pundarika Sutra), translation by Prof. Soothill, Oxford, p. 256.