Legends and Stories of the New Territories
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A man called Yue,Sheung () had a servant girl who stole a lot of things and ran away. He searched for her in vain, so sent some- one to ask Pooi To's help. Pooi To said, "She is dead already. body is in an old tomb on the river shore in Kam Shing." His words were proved to be true. An officer of high rank named 'Hung Ning "Tsz (JLT) was very ill with dysentery. No one could cure him, so Pooi To was consulted. The monk looked sad and said "No he cannot be cured. I have seen four ghosts all badly wounded." When the sick man heard this he wept and said "When 'Suen 'Yan () raised a rebellion, his family were scattered by the soldiers. His parents and an uncle were cruelly treated, and he himself died. Were these their ghosts?" And soon after he died.
The wife of a worthy man, Ts'ai Haai () was ill, and all hope of her recovery was given up. As the doctors appeared no good, Tsai Haai asked the priests to come and pray for her. They could not help. Then one of them said "Why not ask Pooi To to come?" When Pooi To arrived, he wandered into the room, looked at the woman and said quietly "Easy." Then he muttered to himself for a while and gradually the woman was cured. Tsai Haai after that insisted on Pooi To staying with him in his house, and treated him with the greatest of respect.
In the ninth month of the third year of Yuen Ka () of Sung dynasty (A.D. 426) Pooi To went off to a lake in the East called 。Ch'ek 'Shaan Woo () where he became ill, and died. Tsai Haai took his corpse and buried it in a hill called 'Fook 'Chan Shaan (¥) "upside down boat hill," which is somewhere to the north-east of Nanking.
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Two years later one day in the third month, Tsai Haai was in his house with his family, when to his surprise the door opened and Pooi To walked in. He talked pleasantly for a short while, when there was a knock at the door and a priest appeared. He beckoned to Pooi To who followed him, but before he left Pooi To told the family that he had to go to 'Kaau Kwong () (now Kwangtung, Kwangsi and Annam) and would never come back to them. He then threw his cup into the sea and he and the priest sailed away in it, to the Monastery of Tuen Moon Shaan (Castle Peak), where as has been already said, he became Abbot.
Pooi To is reputed also to have lived for a while in another hill nearby called Ling To 'Shaan () “miracle across the Sea Hill," and there is still a monastery there bearing the name of Ling To Tsz (靈渡寺).
Nothing further is known about Pooi To and there are no stories about him after he came to Castle Peak, but it is supposed that the monastery there was carried on by the Buddhist monks for many years after his death. There is nothing recorded to give any indication of how long the monastery continued to exist, but it must have fallen into disuse by the reign of To 1Kwong () 1821-1850 of Ts'ing () dynasty because the Taoists built a monastery then on the site of the old one, and called it 'Ts'ing Wan
July 1935.
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