Avalokiteśvara and the Legend of Miao

Avalokiteśvara and the Legend of Miao-Shan
Author(s): Arthur Waley
Source: Artibus Asiae, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1925), pp. 130-132
Published by: Artibus Asiae Publishers
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3248015
Accessed: 08/06/2010 02:20
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=artibus.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
Artibus Asiae Publishers is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Artibus Asiae.
http://www.jstor.org
des Nashorns. Gleichviel ist die Uberlieferung noch einwandsfrei, wie die
anderen Darstellungen als zweifelsfrei erscheinen lassen. Die Inschrift lautet:
Phra: phlong song rt = der erhabene Feuer(-gott) mit (seinem Reittier) dem
Rhinoceros.
Die vorderindische Uberlieferung ist anders. Sie stellt als Agnis Reittier immer
den Widder dar, der auch in seiner Standarte erscheint. Die alten Mythologien
von Moor und Coleman beschreiben ihn als dreibeinig und siebenarmig. Aul3er
einer solchen Abbildung bei Wilkins* ist mir keine Darstellung dieser Art
bekannt geworden. Es ware wiinschenswert, wenn solche existieren sollten,
diese zu publizieren, da gerade von Agni sehr wenig Darstellungen bekannt
sind. Eine siidindische Miniatur im Besitze des Museums fur Volkerkunde in
Berlin zeigt uns Agni dreikopfig mit zwei Beinen und zwei Armen. Die rechte
Hand hilt eine Schlinge, die linke den Ziigel des Widders. Ziegenbalg** hingegen beschreibt ihn wieder als zweigesichtig, vierarmig und dreifiil3ig mit
feuriger Krone, welch letzteres Attribut auch die siidindische Miniatur zeigt.
ARTHUR
AVALOKITESVARA
AND
WALEY:
THE LEGEND
OF MIAO-SHAN
IN HER INTERESTINGARTICLEEINIGES
ZUR BUDDHISTISCHENM-ADONNA***
Melanie Stiassny quotes the legend of Miao-shan as evidence that <in China
schon seit alters her eine Gottheit der Barmherzigkeit verehrt worden ist, deren Einordnung in den Buddhistischen Gotterkreis sich in spaterer Zeit vollzogen hat ?.
A similar assumption was recently made by Professor M. W. de Visser.nt I think
that both writers have perhaps somewhat mistaken the nature of the legend. It is
* W. I.
Wilkins,
Hindu Mythology, vedic and puranic. Calcutta 1882, 8? p. 19.
** Barthol.
Ziegenbalg, Genealogie der Malabarischen G6tter. Madras und Erlangen 1867. Hrsg.
von Dr. W. Germann, p. 242.
*** Cicerone XV. 22. 1 o 1.
t Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant Dec. 15, 1923. He speaks of <<identificatie met een - inheemsche godin, die ook met name wordt genoemd (Miao-shan)>>.
130
true that the Nan-hai Kuan-yin Ch'iian Chuan (<<CompleteTradition of Kuan-
yin of the Southern Sea>) places the events of the story in the 3rd millenium
B. C.* But this does not in any way prove that the story itself is early.
The preface** to the apocryphal sutra Kuan-yin Chi-tu Pen-yu'an Chen Ching
claims that the text of this sutra (which consists of the Miao-shan legend
told in a long and rather tedious form) was written by the Bodhisattva
Avalokitesvara himself, then lay <perdu> for thousands of years and was finally
discovered by the pious Kuang-yeh Shan-jen who published it in the middle
of the 17th century! This does not of course necessarily indicate that the
legend was unknown before its incorporation in the apocryphal sutra;
but proof is still required that it is not simply a pious invention of the
1 th century.
Every element of the story (including plot, tone, incident etc.) is so characteristic
of medieval Buddhist literature that I personally find it impossible to believe
that it is, at the earliest, more than a few centuries older than the apocryphal
sutra. Moreover the name of the heroine Miao-shan is frankly Buddhist.
I write this note in the hope that someone with a greater knowledge of
Buddhist literature than myself will investigate the question further and ascertain whether the legend can be traced back beyond the 17th century; also
whether it is, as I rather suspect, modelled on one of the Jataka tales, of
which Chinese Buddhist literature has so large a store. It was felt, I think,
by the later Buddhists that Avalokitesvara ought to have her Jatakas just as
Sakyamuni had his. But that such stories in any way assisted the transformation of Avalokitesvara's sex or indeed even preceded it, still remains to
be proved.
I have elsewhere*** suggested that the Tantric worship of Tara, the female
emanation or Sakti of Avalokitesvara, may have prepared the way for the
female Kuan-yin. No doubt, as Professor de Visser suggests, it was preciseley
the Tantric Buddhists who most rigidly maintained the male sex of Avalokitesvara. But at Tun-huang (where popular Buddhism contained a relatively small
* A version
quoted by Eitel places them in the loth century B. C.; other versions, in the 6th
century B. C.
** Dated 1666. The edition in the British Museum was printed in 1870.
*** Introduction to the
Study of Chinese painting, p. 95.
131
admixture of Tantric belief) we find a woodcut of Avalskitesvara bearing upon
it a Tantric invocation to Tara. Except in the minds of worshippers technically
traind in Tantric theory, this was likely to suggest: . that Tara was another
name for Avalokitesvara, 2. that Avalokitesvara was, like Tara, a lady.
No doubt other influences, as yet unknown, favoured the sex-transformation
of this Bodhisattva; but there is no reason at present to believe that the
worship of a native Chinese Mother-goddess was one of them. We do not
as yet even know whether the change took place in China or elsewhere.
OSVALD
QUELQUES
OBSERVATIONS
SUR LES IMITATIONS
SCULPTURES
IL
SIREN:
DES ANCIENNES
CHINOISES*
EXISTE ENCORE UNE SERIE DE GRANDES SCULPTURES SEMBLABLES A CELLES
d6crites dans le numero precedent, representant des Bouddhas assis sur des trones
de lotus. Les personnages vetus de tuniques flottantes laissant la poitrine decouverte,
se detachent sur de grands nimbes ovales decores avec profusion de flammes et
d'ornements floraux. Nous en reproduisons ici un specimen qui se trouve au musee
de Detroit (Abb. Artibus Asiae I p. 64), mais si mes informations sont exactes, il en
existe deux ou trois asse
aa
seblables a celui-ci dans des collections americaines et
japonaises.
La figure principale de cette sculpture est un Bouddha a la taille longue et 1eegante, drape dans un vetement qui tombe de l'epaule sur les bras, s'enroule autour
des jambes et retombe sur le trone de lotus en plis assez mal ordonnes. Les lignes
* Les petites stWles
bouddhiquesde Paris,Philadelphieet Washingtonreproduitesdansla premibre
partie de mon article, ont aussi kt4 reproduites et discutdes plus h fond, dans mon ouvrage:
Chinese Sculpture from the Vth to the XIVth Century p. 77-79,
ou l'on trouve les observations
de Mr. Pelliot sur l'inscription de la stble Peytel.
II serait pr4matur4 de s'exprimer d4finitivement sur l'dpoque de l'ex4cution de ces stbles, aussi
longtemps que l'4nigme dpigraphique de l'inscription, 4videmment contemporaine de l'ex6cution
des steles, n'aura pas 6dt dclaircie. II faut en tout cas admettre que l'etude de cette inscription
ne conduit pas a une datation antdrieure al'apoque
Ming.
132