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The Earliest Tales of the Bodhisattva Guanshiyin

Robert Ford Campany

One of the most influential of early Mahayha sutras is the Sutra of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dharma (Saddharmapundan“nasatru, Chinese: Miaofa lianhua jing), often called simply the Lotus Sutra. It is known to have been translated from Sanskrit into Chinese as early as 255 C.E. It was retranslated at least five times by the year 601, including the version produced in 406 by the govemment sponsored translation bureau headed by one of the greatest of Buddhist translators
in China, the lndo-Iranian missionary Kumarajiva (ca, 350-4091, Kumarajiva’s translation soon became, and still remains, the most popular of the Chinese texts of the sutra.
The twenty-fifth chapter of this translation (twenty-fourth in some translations), entitled Universal Gateway [to Salvation] of the Bodhisattva He Who Observes the Sounds of the World (Guanshiyin pusa pumenpin), was also circulated as an independent scripture under thg title Sutra of Ne Who Observes the Sounds of the World (Guanshiyin Sutra). In Sakyamuni Buddha promises that if people
in extreme difficulty call upon the name of the Bodhisattva He Who Observes the Sounds of the World, they will be swiftly and miraculously rescued from danger by the bodhisattva’s great power and compassion. He utters this promise in response to a question by another bodhisattva:

At that time the Bodhisattva Inexhaustlble Mind . . . straightway rose from his seat and, baring his right shoulder and facing the Buddha with palms joined, said: “0 World-Honored One! For what reason is the Bodhisattva He Who Observes the Sounds of the World (Avalokitesvara) called Observer of the Sounds of the World?” The Buddha declared do the Bodhisattva Inexhaustible Mind, “Good man, if incalculable hundreds of thousands of myriads of millions of living beings, suffering pain and torment, hear of this Bodhisattva He Who Observes the Sounds of the World and single-mindedly call upon his name, the Bodhisattva He Who Observes the Sounds of the World shall straightway heed their voices, and all shall gain deliver ance.” (Hurvitz translation, p. 31 1)

The Buddha then enumerates the types of dangerous situationsfrom which the compassionate bodhisattva rescues those who call upon him: burning, drowning, becoming lost at sea, being murdered, being attacked by demon2, being jailed, falling off a cliff while traveling, and so on. We also read thad the bodhisattva grants happiness, boundless merit, and the birth of children to men and women who call on and worship him. Finally, the Buddha describes how the bodhisattva appears in multitude of different bodie from that of a buddha to that of a boy or girl, that of a god to that of a demon-according to the needs and capacities of those who call on him. Out of compassion he displays to particular beings
whatever bodily form is most apt to convey them to deliverance.
This chapter of the Lotus Sutra is only one of several Buddhist texts translated or written in China before the seventh century that make such claims about the Bodhisattva He Who Observes the Sounds of the World, or Guanshiyn, as he is referred to below. Some early texts give his name as “Guangshiyin,” guang being the character for ‘‘light’’or “radiance”; this usage was soon abandoned. In such cases, I have silently altered the spelling to “Guanshiyin.”
Thanks to multiple translations, monastic copytng of texts, and popular sermons, the teachings contained in the Lotus Sutra and other scriptures concerning Guanshiyin were spread throughout many regions of China from the third to the seventh century. How did the Chinese of that era respond to these teachings? Fortunately we have a valuable body of evidence that affords us a window onto the modes of piety these scriptures inspired. From the late fourth century, a handful of Chinese people, both monks and laypersons, began to write down and collect tales that they had heard or read illustrating the fulfillment of these sutras’ promises on Chinese soil, and some of these tales have come down to us today,
Other evidence of devotion to Guanshiyir: during this period was found at the turn of the century in a sealed cave at Dunhuang in extreme northwestern China. On the walls were paintings depicting Guanshiyin saving people from various types of distress, and among the 42,000 written documents there were hanging banners depicting the same, as well as some 1,048copies of the Lotus Sutra (by
far the greatest number of copies of any sutra found in the cave) and almost 200 separate copies of the Guanshiyin Sutra. These figures represent only the documents that exist today in collections outside the People’s Republic of China; many more are doubtless preserved in Chinese collections.
Chinese of the fourth through the sixth centuries knew the world to be a violent, dangerous, and chaotic place. Non-Chinese nomadic groups, often collectively and derisively termed “caitiffs”(base and despicable people) in the stories to follow, invaded from the north. They seized power in the ancient cradle of Chinese civilization and pushed many Chinese aristocrats and peasants south into
the Yangzi River valley, where they set up a new capital near today’s Nanjing. Those Chinese who remained in the north found themselves living under an unusually harsh regime. The devastating impact of these events on the Chinese cultural imagination has been likened to the effect on Westerners of the sack of “eternal Rome” by the Visigoths about a century afterward.

The movement of certain nomadic Central Asian peoples southward and westward into the Mediterranean rim and eastern Europe was in fact caused, in part, by the southward push by other Central Asian peoples into China. Moreover, during these centuries a series of disastrous floods occurred, contributing to wide-spread famineand plague. Several destructive popular rebellions broke out. Mean while, a small group of elite families contended for power in the southern capital,
creating political instability so great that over a period of slightly more than two and a half centuries five dynasties-the Eastern Jin, Song, Qi, Liang, and Chen succeeded one another until the reunification of China under the Sui dynasty in 589. Given this combination of massive military, political, social, and natural cataclysms, it is no wonder than many Buddhist and Daoist writers of the period predicted the imminent end of the world.
It is also no wonder that devotion to Guanshiyln became so popular in this context. Here was a being who was responsive. and compassionate, whose very name implied his attentiveness to his devoted, and who specialized in extricating them from desperate, hopeless situations. One needed no special gifts or vision to invoke him; one did not have to be a monk, a male, or a literate person to receive his help. Living according to Buddhist precepts, though helpful, was in no way a necessary condition for asking Guanshiyin to intervene. In a moment of crisis-when, to cite the language of tale after tale, “death seemed certain,” “when there seemed to be no way out,”“when escape was impossible”- one acknowledged one’s own helplessness and implored the compassionate bodhisattva for aid.
This call for help is described in both sutras and tales as an act of extreme concentration of mind. utmost sincerety, and sustained or repeated exertion of body and indeed of one’s total being. The person inperil is said to. call on the bodhisattva “with a perfect mind” (zhixin) or “single-mindedly” (yixin) and to
think on him “with utter concentration” (zhinian), “exclusively” (weinian), or “purely” (chunnian). He or she does so with “utmost sincerity” (zhicheng). The invocation often involves sustaining such states of concentration for days on end, though in emergency situations (such as the sudden threat of fire or drowning) Guanshiyin is depicted as responding immediately. And some bodily activity is usually essential: the making of an image of Guanshiyin, presentation of offerings to him, prostration of oneself before his image, or, most commonly, the repeated and continuous oral recitation of his name, of the Guanshiyin Sutra, or even of the entire Lotus Sutra.
The tales translated below are examples of those written to document Guanshiyin’s saving responses to Chinese people in danger. In crisp, concise prose, each tale portrays a particular person in a moment of dire need who calls on Guanshiyin and is miraculously saved. These tales of Guanshiyin form a subset
of a larger genre of Buddhist miracle tales. The miracle tales vary in content, but they all describe some extraordinary event, impossible or highly unlikely under normal circumstances, related to the power or authority of a Buddhist personage (such as a monk), devotional act (such as an offering to an image of the Buddha), or ide (such as karmic retribution for misdeeds). The unusual evoent-ften char acterized as an “anomaly” (yi) or a “divine response” (lingyan, lingying, yingyan, etc.)-was understood to demonstrate, as no verbal argument could do, the truth of buddhism and so the miracle tales constitute a narrative mode of apologetics.
This genre was closely related, both in subject matter and in literary form, to Buddhist hagiographies, or collections of life-accounts (often including miraculous events) of exemplary monks, nuns, and laypersons. The Buddhist miracle tale has continued in China down to the present day (along with counterparts in the Daoist tradition, which borrowed it as an apologetic medium), and it was also
carried to Japan, where it flourished.
The authors of the earliest tale collections that survive were laypersons. They derived their news of miraculous “responses” to Buddhists’ devotion from three sources: previous records written by others, hearsay from a trusted acquaintance or relative (many of the persons mentioned as sources of stories are monks), and personal experience.
Why did these authors record tales of Guanshiyin’s responses to cries for help? First, recording and spreading these tales was itself an act of merit for it encouraged others to join in devotion to Guanshiyin. (Similarly, the Lotus Sutra is filled with promises of great rewards to readers and hearers who copy and spread it.) Second, the authors seem to have wanted to athenticate the fulfillment of the sutra's promises in order to show that the sutras were true and that the practices they enjoined were efficacious. This is suggested most clearly by the fact that the authors sometimes directly quoted a passage from the Guanshiyin Sutra (or some other sutra concerning Guanshiyln) that seemed directly relevant to a particular miraculous event. This authentication of the sutras relates to a third function of the tales to argue the truth of Buddhism against its detractors and to show its superiority ov the competing religion of Daoism as well as the old cults of local god. Finally, the tales were one medium used in the larger Chinese effort to domesticate Buddhism. In showing how a powerful being of foreign origin, first
known to the Chinese through a translated text, responded to specific, named, historical individuals at particular places at times in China, the tales helped to weave more Buddhist strands into the fabric of Chinese religion and culture while also giving the bodhisattva an increasingly Chinese face:
Thus began the process that would culminate, during the late Tang and especially the Song (960-1279), in the feminization of the earlier masculine figure and her thorough incorporation as a goddess into Chinese religion and folklore, in which she has occupied an important place ever since.

Finally, a word on the current state of the tale collections is in order. The approximately 470 Buddhist miracle tales that survive from before the seventh century now exist in various forms. Some of the earliest were found in this century in a Japanese monastery, in a document apparently dating from the twelfth century. The majority of extant tales, however, were preserved not in their original
sequences but under topical headings in encyclopedic collections such as the seventh-century Buddhist work A Grove of Pearls from the Garden of the Dharma (Fayuan zulin) by the monk Daoshi or later encyclopedias such as the tenth- century Broad-ranging Records Compiled in the Era of Great Peace (Taipingguangji). A great many of these tales have in turn been reassembled under their original
titles by the twentieth-century scholar and author Lu Xun in his Gleanings of Ancient Tales (Gu xiaoshuo gouchen). The following translations draw on all these sources.

TALE 1

XiGSY 20 (RKKO 34). This tale was also anthologized in slightly more elaborate form in the monk Sengxiang ’sseventh-century collection, Tales of the Lotus Blossom (Sutra) (Fahua zhuanji, T 2068, v. 51), j. 5 (71a).

There was a widow surnamed Li who lived in Liang Province (modern Gansu). Her family had long been Buddhist; they faithfully kept every fast day and attended meetings. Each time she would listen to sutra readings; as soon as they were over, she could recite the sutra herself. Later, a [Chinese] woman
who had been made a princess among the caitiffs (the northern non-Chinese peoples who conquered much of China north of the Yangzi valley) suddenly [showed up and1 sought refuge in Li’s home. It was a moonless night, and Li could not bear to send her away. Soon officials came to register Li [on the
population list], and their report stated that she was harboring a rebellious female slave. Once this register was submitted [to the authorities],Li was jailed. Then with a perfect mind she recited the Guanshiyin Sutra and was able to keep reciting it continuously for over ten days.
Suddenly in the middle of the day she saw Guanshiyin. He asked her why she did not leave [her cell]; she replied that it was impossible. He then said: ‘Just get up.” On doing so she found that her shackleswere already unfastened, and then she quickly found herself back at home. The warden and the guards were all completely unaware of her departure. Later when the caitiffs learned of her escape, they sent someone to question her and find out how she had managed to return home. She told them everything that had happened. She was not rearrested.

TALE 2

XYJ 6 (LX4371, based on BZL 7 (sec. 8, 539b-c note); cf. TPGJ 110.

Che Mu was involved in the Prince of Luling’s Song-era disaster at Blue Mud and was captured by the caitiffs and held in their camp. His mother had long been a devout Buddhist. She now lit seven lamps before a Buddhist image (probably of Guanshiym) and during the night concentrated with a striving
mind on Guanshiym, asking that her son be freed. After she did this for an entire year, her son suddenly [was able to1 escape and make his way home. He walked alone for seven days and nights, heading south. Often at night he would lose his way, unable to tell east from west; but then in the distance he
would see seven points of firelight, and so he would head toward those lights. It would always seem as if he was about to reach a village, but he never found one.
After seven nights of this he suddenly found himself at his home. He saw his mother still prostrated on the ground before the Buddhist image; then, seeing the seven lamps, he suddenly realized [what the firelight had actually been]. The mother and son discussed what had happened and knew it must
be due to the Buddha’s power. From that time on they both made earnest prayers [of thanksgiving] and scrupulously performed acts of mercy and kindness.

TALE 3

Sun En’s rebellion (399 400 c.E.) was Daoist in ideology and recruited masses of disaffected peasants from the coastal provinces of Zhejiang and Fujian. My translation of the phrase “fled the destruction” is tentative. Formerly, when the bandit Sun [En] stirred up rebellion, many people living
near the coast, both aristocrats and commoners, fled the destruction. A group of a dozen or so people were about to be executed in the eastern marketpkkace. Only one among them respected the dharma and this man began chanting [the name of] Guanshiyin with perfect sincerety. Another man who was sitting with him asked him wht he was doing. He replied, "I have heard that the scriptures of the Buddha's dharma mention a bodhisattva Guanshiyin who saves people from distress. so I am taking refugein him." The othr man then followed his example. When the hour of execution arrived, the official list [for those to be executed] was found to be lacking just the names of these two people. This created a shock and panic in the crowd, and everyone fled in diferent directions. These two men followed the crowd and were thus able to escape execution.

TALE 4

Sun Daode, who lived during the Song, was a daoist and a libatiner (that is a leader in communal affaiirs and liturgies of the Daoist Celestial Masterlineage). He still had no son even after passing the age of fifty. In the year 423 a [Buddhist ] monk who lived in a monastery nearby told Daode "If you are determined to have a son, you must respectfully and with perfect mind recite the Guanshiyin Sutra You may then hope for success." Daode then gave up serving the Dao; with single-minded sincerity he took refuge in guanshiyin . within a few days he had a dream -response. His wife was indeed pregnant and subsequently she gave birth to a boy.