vajra

[Stephen Hodge]

Venkatraman Iyer writes:
> Does this have anything to do with the male Avalokita
> turning into female Guanyin in the Orient?
There are sevaral aspects to this matter.  In contrast to Tibet,
Taaraa never achieved great popularity in her own right in China so I
think Avalokite`svara sometimes became a surrogate version.  Also
Chinese does not readily distinguish male and female genders in words
so, for example, when later Mahaayaana/Tantric Buddhism reached China,
the female beings among the pletora of deities were often treated as
male -- at least that seems to be the case from iconographical
drawings.  Also a lot of the depictions tend towards a kind of
androgynous style that could either be make of female and only the
garb helps distinguish the sex.
As for Guan-yin, conventional scholarly wisdom maintains that "she"
was derived by a conflation of an old southern Chinese sea goddess
with an already feminized Avalokite`svara.

Bestw ishes,
Stephen Hodge