Kuan-yin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokitesvara

Chun-fang Yu specializes in Chinese Buddhism and this is the standard, extensively documented study of how the Indian bodhisattva Avalokitesvara became the Chinese Kuan-yin, working from Buddhist scripture, miracle tale literature, pilgrimage practice and art historical evidence together rather than from doctrine alone. Yu's own central argument, that the change is a documented process of Chinese indigenization rather than a simple import of an already female Indian figure, is grounded in that combined textual, narrative and art historical record. This record also carries forward here a specific finding once mistakenly attributed to a separate title: the dating of Kuan-yin's shift to female iconography to roughly the tenth through twelfth centuries is this book's own documented finding, not a separate companion source's. Use it for established scholarly facts about Kuan-yin's origin, gender transformation and cult across China; a claim about a specific regional cult practice today needs a more localized ethnographic source alongside it.