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Chapter 69

The Buddhas Who Drank the Oil

金平府元宵觀燈 三犀精假佛騙油At Gold-Level Prefecture they watch the Lantern Festival; three rhinoceros fiends, feigning Buddhas, cheat the people of oil.
世德堂本 1592, juan 19
Narration

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Gold-Level Prefecture kept the most beautiful Lantern Festival in the world, and at its heart stood three golden lamps of enormous size, and into these lamps, every year on the fifteenth night of the first month, the city poured a fortune — hundreds of great jars of the finest fragrant oil, the wealth of the whole prefecture rendered into fuel, because the tradition held that on that night three Buddhas descended from the sky to receive the offering, and that in exchange for the oil they blessed the coming year with good harvests and fair weather.

And on the night the pilgrims were there to see it, three Buddhas did descend.

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