Taisho 1060, and the Thousand Arms

The version that matters for East Asian practice is the Chinese one made by Bhagavaddharma in the middle of the seventh century, catalogued as Taisho 1060 and titled for the Thousand-Handed and Thousand-Eyed Avalokiteshvara. Its frame is conventional: the bodhisattva asks the Buddha's leave to utter a dharani for the benefit of beings, receives it, and speaks. Around that frame the sutra sets out the benefits of recitation and the manner of it, and it is from these passages that the East Asian liturgical use descends.

The thousand-armed form the title names is one of the most widespread images in Asian Buddhist art, with an eye in each palm: the arms are the capacity to act and the eyes the capacity to see where action is needed, which is compassion described as a practical faculty rather than a feeling. In China this Avalokiteshvara became Guanyin, and over several centuries was increasingly represented as female, a transformation Chun-fang Yu has traced in detail and which has no close parallel in the Indian material.

The dharani is recited daily in Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Japanese monasteries, and in Korea the Cheonsugyeong built around it is among the most familiar of all Buddhist texts. Its currency is out of all proportion to the attention the sutra itself receives.