Guanyin Legend
01 · Historical Records
As early as the Baozhao period of the Southern Song, 1225-1227, the Changguo County Gazetteer already records the Guanyin Baotuo temple on Meicen mountain, present-day Mount Putuo. The record of the Japanese monk Huie bringing Guanyin in the Siming Illustrated Gazetteer of the Qiandao period of Emperor Xiaozong of the Southern Song is even earlier. From then on the legend of the Guanyin Who Would Not Leave has been transmitted to the present. The Yuan-dynasty Western Regions monk Sheng Ximing wrote the Life of Mount Potalaka, which records such legends as Sudhana's Eighteen Visits to See the Self-Existing One, the Guanyin's Thirty-Three Manifestations Preaching According to Kind and the Tang Dynasty Brahmin Monk Who Burnt His Ten Fingers Before the Tide-Sound Cave and Personally Saw the Bodhisattva Manifest and Preach; the Putuo Mountain Gazetteers since the Ming and Qing record even more of Guanyin's miraculous legends. The New Gazetteer of Potalaka, compiled in the twelfth year of the Republic, 1923, has a special section on miracles recording sixty-eight kinds of Guanyin's miraculous legends. Besides those in the old gazetteers, the Ming Wanli period saw the appearance of the Complete Life of the South Sea Guanyin, and in the early Republic the popular storybook Guanyin Attains the Way circulated among the people. The Guanyin legends of Zhoushan take Mount Putuo as their centre, and the gazetteers, monks' biographies and folk tradition of successive ages supplement one another, forming a body of legends represented by the Guanyin Who Would Not Leave.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Mount Potalaka at the eastern corner of the Zhoushan archipelago in Zhejiang is one of the four great Buddhist mountains of China and the site of the world-famous Guanyin holy place. The Guanyin legends circulating in various parts of Zhoushan have a history of more than a thousand years and mostly arose from Mount Putuo. The Zhoushan Guanyin legends are mostly attached to such natural scenery and temple sites of Mount Putuo as its marvellous rocks, the Tide-Sound Cave and the Purple Bamboo Grove, their plots interwoven with such themes as Guanyin's manifestation, her salvation of the world from calamity and her exhortation to goodness and punishment of evil, combining the colour of religious belief and local scenery legend.
The Legend of the Guanyin Who Would Not Leave
The Guanyin legend, set against the Japanese monk Huie bringing the Guanyin, transmitted to the present.
The Legend of Guanyin Appearing at the Tide-Sound Cave
One of the miraculous Guanyin legends recorded in the Yuan Life of Mount Potalaka.
The Complete Life of the South Sea Guanyin
A life of Guanyin that appeared in the Wanli period of the Ming.
The Storybook Guanyin Attains the Way
A storybook circulating among the people in the early Republic.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
For a thousand years Guanyin, as the bodhisattva of boundless Buddhist power, has been widely worshipped among the people of Zhoushan and elsewhere; the Guanyin belief has long transcended nation and border, forming a Guanyin culture that exhorts people to goodness and loves peace.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The Guanyin legends play a special role in linking the feelings of compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait and spreading traditional Chinese culture, and have very high research value in aesthetics, archaeology, history, sociology and psychology, being important material for studying folk belief and maritime culture. The Guanyin legends take Mount Putuo as their centre, the gazetteers, monks' biographies and folk tradition of successive ages supplementing one another in an unbroken transmission.
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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