Avalokiteśvara / Kouan-yin, un exemple de transformation d'un dieu en déesse
Authors: Stein R. A. 
Published: March 2010

Avalokiteśvara/Kuan-yin: Transformation of a God into a Goddess

Whoever studies the mythology or the iconography of the Far East is confronted with the problem of the Bodhisatta Avalokiteśvara's "sex change". R.A. Stein deals with it in an encyclopaedic fashion and without any claim to present a complete survey of all its ramifications. His focus is on the Indian and Chinese mythology of this figure, with frequent references to Tibetan and Japanese material. Aware of the elusiveness of any neat solution to this "sexual" problem, he seeks to uncover the structural or thematic similarities within this mythological material and to demonstrate the "internal logic" of the myth of sexual transformation (using an analytical method which he has already employed elsewhere on a smaller scale, cf. Stein 1981).

After a sampling of historical information (Parts 1-3), especially concerning the type of Kuan-yin "Bestower of children", Stein proceeds to reject some scholarly explanations as too linear : the mixing up of Kuan-yin with Tārā or with Hāritī and the influence of the goddess Pāndaravāsinī with the willow branch and of various figures "in white robes" (Pai-yi), sometimes holding a vase (Part 4).

In a short chapter called "Motivations possibles" (Part 5), Stein mentions some sutra passages dealing with Avalokiteśvara and his Bodhisattva nature. Here one could add the observation that, doctrinally speaking, there can be no question of the sexual nature of a Bodhisattva since he is above sexually determined human beings and gods. A female Bodhisattva figure can have a mustache and a beard precisely in order to neutralize the sexual definition by two contradictory traits and thus transcend sexuality. One could also consider that these transformations affect Avalokiteśvara more than other Bodhisattvas since, as the foremost Bodhisattva of compassion, he has to have multiple "transformation bodies" (hua-shen) at his command, in order to help various kinds of beings. This is clear in the famous Pu-men p'in chapter of the Lotus Sutra, to which Stein repeatedly refers, and it is also borne out by the very varied appearances of Avalokiteśvara in the Tantric tradition which is treated in the following chapter.

In "Rôle possible de personnages du pantheon (indien) liés à Avalokiteśvara" (Part 6), Stein conducts a very original investigation of the Tantric tradition and its connections with Indian mythology. He considers the numerous consequences of the fact that Avalokiteśvara is a transformation and adaptation of Siva/Mahesvara and, in the process, discovers several recurrent themes. First of all, there is a whole cluster of myths concerning eyes (transformation into eyes of the sex organs covering the body of Indra, etc.) of which the most developed type is the representation of Avalokiteśvara with a thousand hands and a thousand eyes. Then there are some myths concerning nets: from the net of jewel strings covering Avalokiteśvara's body to the net for catching fish and the "connected skeleton" (a sign of sainthood, treated in the following chapter). Stein also alludes to the theme of the horse, a theme which he develops later in the section on China.

In "L'émergence de Kouan-yin féminine dans la littérature et la peinture (chinoises)" (Part 7), Stein examines three Chinese legends of popular and regional character, in all of which Kuan-yin is a woman.

1) Treating the legend of Miao-shan (p. 45-54), he shows himself appreciative of the recent study by Glen Dudbridge without however accepting all of Dudbridge's conclusions. He highlights the virgin Miao-shan's sacrifice of her own eyes and hands — a privation for which she is, in a classical structural inversion, rewarded with a transformation into the Kuan-yin of a thousand eyes and a thousand hands. Stein considers this appearance of Kuan-yin, perhaps too exclusively, as terrifying; it is possible that the adepts of this cult themselves saw in the thousand eyes and hands a symbol of the multiple efficacy of Kuan-yin's compassion.

2) Discussing the myth of the Wife of Mr. Ma (Ma lang fu, p. 54-57), Stein focuses on the contradiction of a female sexuality freely offered to any man but withheld from the husband.

3) In the myth of the Kuan-yin with the fish basket (Yü-lan, p. 57-61), Stein finds traces of some Indian myths and several sexual themes connected with nets, fishing, the odor of fish, etc. While this myth is an example showing that the Chinese, even after the T'ang Dynasty, were much better informed about India than is generally assumed, Stein also discerns in it traces of the old Chinese sericultural myth of the flayed horse, a myth with its own sexual connotations.

The article concludes (Part 8) with more general considerations, backed each time by examples, on the significance of myths. Unlike C.G. Jung and M. Eliade, Stein does not believe the idea of archetypes inherent in the human mind to be of much help in the unravelling of myths. For him, the intense interaction of peoples and cultures in any given geographical area can, at times, bring very ancient elements of myth back to the surface, simply because these elements had survived in some oral tradition or happened to be rediscovered by an individual author in some ancient document.

Transformations and associations do not produce themselves in a manner which modern scholars would think "natural". They happen in an indirect and unexpected way, often featuring the inversion of certain traits (for a clear example of inversion, Stein refers, in note 123, to his study on the three hearthstones which, in China, are one male and two female deities, in Vietnam however one female and two male deities) . All that we can do in the study of mythology is to make an inventory of these transformations, try to isolate pertinent traits and see if we can discover the relations between them.

In this study, Stein goes far beyond the doctrinal view of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara who transcends sexuality and manifests himself in multiple metamorphoses. Stein makes us understand why it was precisely the figure of Avalokiteśvara that attracted all these multifarious themes and why his form with a thousand eyes and hands became the most popular.

The "Note additionnelle" discusses some quite unknown Chinese types of Kuan-yin dating from the Sung and Yüan periods brought to Stein's attention only after finishing the article. These unusual sculptures from Ta-tsu and from Hangchow make us realize how much remains to be done on the subject.