Feminized While Domesticated: How Yü Chun-Fang Avoids Feminist Interpretive Biases in Her Study of Avalokiteśvara

Abstract

Bodhisattva Guanyin, or Avalokiteśvara, has undergone a series of transformations and has become one of the most widely worshiped bodhisattvas in the history of Chinese Buddhism. Yü Chun-fang’s work, Kuan-Yin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokiteśvara, with a Chinese version out in 2012, has meticulously documented this process. This article reviews Yü’s seminal methodology, which has been adopted in her study of the imported deity’s feminization and domestication course, and analyses how she avoids the feminist interpretive biases that are common to the present-day Buddhology.

1. Introduction

This article reviews Yü Chun-fang’s work (2001) and its interpretation of the feminization and domestication of Avalokiteśvara 觀世音菩薩, examining how she avoids methodological limitations found in certain feminist approaches to Buddhist studies. Avalokiteśvara, also known as Guanyin1 觀音 (Perceiver of Sound), or Guanshiyin 觀世音 (Perceiver of the World Sound), is the Bodhisattva of Compassion who is worshiped in the entire Buddhist world. In India, from the earliest Common Era until Buddhism’s disappearance in the twelfth century, the Avalokiteśvara cult enjoyed a long and steady prosperity. In the East Asian countries, such as Japan and Korea, that received China’s Mahāyāna legacy, Avalokiteśvara is identified as the Goddess of Mercy as well as an exemplar of wisdom. In most of the Southeast Asian countries and regions that are under Theravada influence, such as Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Tibet, where Vajrayāna prevails, Avalokiteśvara is often associated with royalty (Holt 1991, p. 217).

The numerous scriptures, paintings, and statues that render Avalokiteśvara’s profiles are sorted by Yü Chun-fang into four groups along a chronological line in an ascending order of importance: 1. a stick figure as a background prop, 2. a close associate and future successor of Amitābha, thus a future Buddha, 3. a savior subordinate to Sakyamuni Buddha, 4. an independent savior (Yü 2001, p. 32). In investigating the earliest mentions of Avalokiteśvara in Buddhism’s cannons, Yü finds the deity merely one of the attending entourages. The two sutras of the Perfection of Wisdom Genre, Mental Fixation of Integral Illumination and Ugraparipṛcchā Sūtra (The inquiry of Ugra) 優伽問經, describe Avalokiteśvara as one of the fifty bodhisattvas attending the Buddha.2 However, in later Mahāyāna literature, the deity is either singled out with Mahāsthāmaprāpta 大勢智菩薩 as one of the two principal bodhisattvas in the Amitābha Land, or is described as one of the two attendants of Amitābha, the other one, again, being Mahāsthāmaprāpta.

The sutra crucial to Avalokiteśvara’s best-known profile, as the worldly savior, is the Lotus Sutra 法華經, which has been translated into Chinese in six versions, of which three versions have survived today. In its twenty-fourth chapter, the character of the deity is developed into a full-fledged merciful savior. He shows up everywhere in the world when needed, saving people from sufferings and disasters, and assumes various forms to accomplish his missions. While his assistance is offered to the masses in general, he is particularly merciful to people endangered by swords, fetters, fire, demons, and water (Chen 1972, p. 341). The chapter became so well-liked that it was often singled out and circulated as a monograph, and great merits were given to its transcription; some devotees would even go so far as to write it with their own blood.3 Following the translation of the Lotus Sutra, miracle accounts—stories extolling the bodhisattva’s marvelous power—also started to circulate.4 Avalokiteśvara gained majestic light and ultimate saving power in the tenth-to-eleventh-century Pure Land literature; the artistic or sculptural representations of this power are usually paintings and images of him holding a lotus bud in his hand. In the Sutra of Kuan-shih-yin Bodhisattva’s Receiving Prediction (Kuan-shihyin P’u-sa shou-chi ching) 觀世音菩薩受記經, Sakyamuni reveals that after the nirvana of Amitābha and the ending of the Age of True Dharma, Avalokiteśvara will become the next Buddha.5

In the Sanskrit texts of the Lotus Sutra as well as in other Indian cannons such as Gaṇḍavyūha and Kāraṇḍavyūha, Avalokiteśvara had always been depicted as male. His statues were prevailingly built throughout India in the fifth century, according to the record of the Chinese pilgrim Fa Xian 法顯 of the Jin dynasty (Paul and Wilson 1979, p. 249).

The exact time and place at which the masculine mustache-growing bodhisattva was transformed to female is unclear. When Avalokiteśvara was brought to China from India in the fifth century, this bodhisattva was distinctly male. For three hundred years or so he remained manlike, and then a gradual, yet discernible, transformation started to appear: he would be depicted as either masculine or asexual. By the tenth century, a profound and startling gender change was on the way; by the sixteenth century, Avalokiteśvara had not only been entirely domesticated, but had also finished the gender transformation and became known as the most beloved “goddess of mercy,” Guanyin.6

2. Methodology

Methodologically, this review adopts a hermeneutic approach, contextualizing Yü Chun-fang’s analysis within both the historical formation of the Guanyin cult and the broader feminist discourse in Buddhist studies.

Yü Chun-fang deliberately avoids the term “Sinification” in favor of “transformation” and “domestication” to denote the bodhisattva’s adaptation across Asian cultures, a choice that accentuates the universal dynamics of localization rather than a pure Chinese process.7 This framing aligns with broader scholarly attention to Buddhism’s integration in non-Chinese contexts, emphasizing selective cultural appropriations that imbue the bodhisattva with local characteristics. By adopting these terms, Yü not only avoids the cultural chauvinism implicit in “Sinification” but also enriches her analysis of the bodhisattva’s Asian attributes, treating it as a multifaceted transformation attuned to diverse indigenous needs—thereby sidestepping reductive feminist narratives that might overemphasize gendered imposition over adaptive agency.

Guanyin’s feminine forms vary. As represented in stories and depicted in the massive number of paintings and sculptures of this goddess, the better-known manifestations of her are the White-Robed, the South-Sea, the Thousand-Armed, Princess Miao Shan, the Water-Moon, and the Fish-Basket (Boucher 1999, p. 6).

The earliest art form of the Chinese Avalokiteśvara is the White-Robed. She is delicately slender, sometimes referred to as the “white-clad” Guanyin. Despite her possible Tantric Buddhism origin, Yü declares her a genuine Chinese creation, since no similar feminine forms are found in Indian, Central Asian, Southeast Asian or Tibetan artistic traditions. Yü believes that the rest of the Guanyin forms, generated from a later period, are also Chinese creations.8

Yü compares the White-Robed Guanyin with the Water-Moon Guanyin and finds her: 1. decisively feminine (whereas the Water-Moon form is more masculine); 2. of course, wearing the white garment, which is an indication of her Tibetan origin; 3. associated with the child-giving capability.

As art historians have pointed out, the Buddhist images made during the Song 宋 and Qi 齊 of the Period of Division have thick lips and prominent noses. Their eyes are long and their cheeks full, rendering their appearances heroic and manly. However, from the Tang 唐 and onwards, the faces of bodhisattvas, including that of the Avalokiteśvara, became round with layered chins, while their bodies are suppler due to the influence of contemporary esthetic standards.9 Although the white color of the robe still seems derivative of the Tantric tradition in Tibet, the iconography of Guanyin was by that time already domesticated; promoted by indigenous scriptures, miracle tales, legends and art, the White-Robed manifestation finds its way ever deeper into the hearts of women. Slightly regrettably, Yü’s work preceded the 2012 research of Jinah Kim, which precluded her drawing wisdom from Kim’s cogent arguments on the significance of Tantric influence over women, especially the laity (Kim 2012).

In her letter to Sandy Boucher, another researcher of Avalokiteśvara, Yü summarizes and explains the transformation process:

The original universal bodhisattva had to fit the mold of Chinese religious sensibility by taking on Chinese identities before Kuan-yin could succeed as the most famous Buddhist deity in China.10

Only by fitting into this context could the image of Guanyin enter into Chinese culture; the replacement of the male Avalokiteśvara would ensue when a consanguineous experience was established.

Trained in both intellectual history and the history of Chinese Buddhism, and placing herself in the matrix between a historian and an educator of religion, Yü Chun-fang carries on her previous working pattern, that is, she would resort to a set of “indispensable standard tools”: scriptures, historical documents, individual works by Buddhist monks and literati, and monastic and local gazetteers. Yet, in the Avalokiteśvara project, Yü’s pronounced inspiration comes from a method advocated by Daniel Overmeyer: THF, i.e., “text, history and fieldwork”.11

She opens most of the chapters with her observations of the Avalokiteśvara cult in modern times. The justification she gives to herself for treating an ancient deity from a present-day perspective is that the cult12 remains a potent, ongoing worship, prominent and contemporary in both the celestial and lay worlds of China. Most of her observations are based on fieldwork, and Yü confesses that the initial impetus to undertake the project springs from her childhood interests in the bodhisattva and being intrigued by her maternal grandmother. Those direct experiences enhance the authenticity and readability of the work.

Yü utilizes religious and folk literature as her raw materials. The Avalokiteśvara cult, she points out, has been long blended into China’s folk tradition. Not only Guanyin is worshiped by Buddhist monastics and devotees but she is also revered by lay people in general. Since Guanyin is of great importance to sectarian and folk religions, the inclusion of the Precious Scrolls, or Baojuan 寶卷, into the study, becomes a must.

Yü takes delight in shifting between a bird’s-eye view and a worm’s-eye view. A well-trained religion scholar, she utilizes the panoramic scan to analyze the Avalokiteśvara cult from the horizon of world religious history and examines both exoteric and esoteric Buddhism to see “why and how this bodhisattva is important”.13 That she is also able to get down to niceties and small details gives her work a touch of refined texture.

Yü is not the first scholar who realizes the unique reciprocal and mutually validating relationship between miracle tales and indigenous Guanyin literature, but she is arguably the only Buddhologist who engages in extensive research on the subject and arrives at a convincing conclusion. She takes notice of the rapid growth of miracle tales after the introduction of the Lotus Sutra, and she dedicates a chapter to examining the spectacle. Her conclusion accords with that of Robert Campany, that is, miracle tales did play an essential role in generating and reinforcing faith in Guanyin. However, Yü does not simply stop here. She proposes the following questions to herself and to the readers: “how do we know that this information was disseminated in society? Of the many sutras about Kuan-yin, which ones became well-known? Of the many forms of Kuan-yin, which ones became the objects of cultic worship?”14 To address those questions, she turns from scriptural studies to Avalokiteśvara’s cultic manifestations, and singles out the legend of Princess Miao-shan as a pivotal case study that intertwines feminization with domestication, rather than subordinating one to the other.15 The references she uses include, but are not limited to, The Precious Scrolls of Xiangshan 香山寶卷,16 Śūraṅgama Sutra 楞嚴經 and The Lotus Sutra, Song paintings and sculptures, Ming novels and dramas, biographies of Buddhist masters, and modern scholars’ fieldwork research. Lai Swee-fo’s 1993 trip to Xiangshan Monastery turns out to be the key to the solving of the Miaoshan mystery. In this trip, Lai saw the 1308 re-erected stele with the inscription that was originally transcribed by Jiang Zhiqi 蒋之奇, a Song literati-officer. The content of the inscription is the biography of Avalokiteśvara, which identified the deity as Princess Miaoshan.17

Yü acknowledges that “the significance of the legend as told by Chiang’s (Jiang’s) inscription cannot be overemphasized.”18 Yet she extends the analysis beyond historical origins to probe its gendered implications. The figure of Miao-shan—as a filial daughter who offers her own body to redeem her father—embodies the Confucian virtues of obedience, chastity, and self-effacement. Such values, as Yü argues, operate ambivalently: they elevate Guanyin’s compassion to a paradigmatic ideal while simultaneously reinforcing patriarchal moral order. “Chinese women, like Miao-shan, never really left the patriarchal home.”19 Yü seems to suggest a double entendre.

The princess’s refusal of marriage and eventual self-mutilation therefore should not be read as gestures of proto-feminist rebellion. Rather, they function as a strategy of domestication through which Avalokiteśvara is localized and moralized—recast as a salvific figure who validates women’s suffering within the Confucian ethical framework. This domestication, far from challenging existing hierarchies, enables the cult’s extraordinary appeal among women devotees precisely by rendering it compatible with prevailing social norms.

Based on these methodological foundations, the following discussion analyzes Yü’s key arguments regarding the feminization and domestication of Guanyin, drawing on textual and historical examples.

3. Discussion

Yü’s relative silence on overtly feminist interpretations is thus methodologically deliberate. By situating questions of sexuality and female agency within the intellectual and moral discourses of late imperial China, she avoids the anachronistic projection of modern feminist sensibilities onto premodern religious culture. In this sense, Yü’s analysis reflects a disciplined historiographical fidelity: domestication here is not a vehicle of resistance but an incorporation of gender into the moral logic of Confucian ethics, a process that both constrains and sustains Guanyin’s moral authority.

Chapter 10 provides vivid examples from late imperial China, where historical texts and sectarian scriptures reveal how the bodhisattva’s feminine forms emerged as responses to local social dynamics. Yü analyzes figures like the Fish-basket Guanyin (Yulan Guanyin, or Mr. Ma’s Wife), a market woman who tests suitors’ virtue, drawing from Ming–Qing miracle tales and Chan discourses.

For instance, when the Chan master Feng-hsüeh Yen-chao (887–973) of Ju-chou (Shensi) was asked by a monk, “What is the pure Body of Dharma?” he answered, “Mr. Ma’s Wife of the Golden Sand Beach (Chin-sha-t’an).”20

Yü interprets this response not merely as a paradoxical Chan utterance but as a reflection of how bodhisattva’s feminine forms had permeated the symbol of enlightenment. The association of a female market vendor with the Dharma Body collapses the boundary between the sacred and the mundane, suggesting that enlightenment may be embodied in the everyday and the feminine. By linking Chan rhetoric with vernacular imagination, Yü reveals how Buddhist soteriology was rearticulated through gendered and local idioms, turning the bodhisattva into a point where doctrinal insight and popular devotion converge. Established feminist scholars of Buddhism tend to focus their studies on the tension between universalism and the misogamist notions reflected from the early Indian tradition. As agreed by most feminist Buddhologists, in Brahmanical India, expressions of a profoundly antipathetic attitude towards women were commonplace. Women were despised, and they were suspected from many aspects: their strength, their intelligence, their fidelity, their capacities for independence and spiritual liberation. As early as a century ago, at the Ninth International Congress of Orientalists, two women researchers, Mabel Bode and Caroline Foley, delivered groundbreaking papers on the role of women in early Buddhism (Foley 1893, p. 348; Also see Bode 1893, pp. 341–43). They maintain that the rise of Buddhism is a reform of Brahmanical Indian society relating to elevating women’s status. Since then, female spirituality has been cherished in Buddhism, and androcentrism banished. The reconstruction of women’s status in early Buddhism, sadly, remains inaccurate.

The more recent feminist scholarship usually stresses the paradoxical stands of Mahāyāna tradition of women. For example, whereas Dianna Paul argues that, in the early Buddhist tradition, women were biologically determined to be more “defiled”, and could never be illuminated, she also believes that the misogamist texts were generated merely by a small group of monks with insecurities and fears concerning their sexuality. She holds an appreciative attitude to the sympathetic portraits of women that are preserved in Mahāyāna literature.21 According to Paul, it took Buddhists centuries to achieve an androgynous Buddhology, but it is still a commendable trend.

Why the need to criticize religious androcentrism? Why do feminist theologians always take the exclusion of female divinity figures as devaluing the feminine, and as robbing women of an image with which they could identify? This author proposes that there has been a rooted feminist tradition in Western academia that is generated from the reflection and criticism on androcentrism in Judaic and Christian traditions. Refuting the “disappearing women” scenario, brought up by B. C. Law (Law 1939), Nancy Falk and Rita Gross (Falk and Gross 1980), K. K. Shah (Shah 2001) and R. M. Davidson (Davidson 2002), who see women, both lay and monastic, disappearing from the Buddhist scene of medieval India, Miranda Shaw is eager to embark on a series of feminist discourses to accentuate the active roles of women, relying on received literature from Tibet and elsewhere (Shaw 1994). Unfortunately, not all of her sources are cautiously verified, nor is she thought to have included the least amount of archeological and historical evidence from the period (Kinnard 1995). Kim, who equally believes in the positive effects of Tantric Buddhism over women, calls the Shaw materials “fantastic accounts,” which only represent “the active roles of a select few women,” and that they “provide little enlightenment on the social status of women.”22

American feminist scholars have always been interested in discovering goddesses—either in the West, before the rise of the patriarchal tradition23, or in the deities of the non-western tradition. As Paul puts forward:

What feminists are demanding is a radical change in the stories, images, and symbols of women and the feminine. This is a compelling challenge to all religious institutions in which the hard, encrusted, and tenacious patterns of thinking about women and their feminine natures have been deeply embedded and ingrained. For many feminist theologians and feminists in general, the women’s movement cannot be effective without challenging some of the basic symbols and images of religion. To a large extent, those opposed to the women’s movement have rallied forces from religious organizations which have deeply ingrained prejudices embodied in their use of religious images. The challenge women face today, in confronting religious values and belief systems which powerfully deprive women of their autonomy and their desired goals, can be given momentum by looking at images of women and the feminine in other traditions.

(Paul 1981)

One of the key features of feminist theology has been to discover sacred female symbols and appellations and to uphold them to defy the demonstrated relationship between ancient patriarchy and male images of God. While endeavors promoting gender justice and equality are indeed plausible, religious scholars also find in the elevated status of antediluvian women, made prominent through the interpretations of female goddesses, a smack of wishful thinking. Feminist theologians, mostly female, Western and Caucasian, are keen to retrieve divine female images from Jewish, Hindu, Tibetan, Taoist, Buddhist, and even Native American, sources of literature, painting, sculpture, etc., to render feminist agendas vocal. Forced interpretation can be misleading and is often the wellspring of strained theses. For example, Hindu tradition boasts venerated Mother Goddesses, but “it cautions us about positing any necessary relationship between the presence of feminine images and forms of God in a religion and the status of women.” (Anantanand 2001, p. 33). Jewish feminists’ harsh critiques on patriarchal theological concepts are often expressed in phraseology such as “images of God as male and as dominating Other,” and that God must be seen as “judge and oppressive,” which virtually prevent any possible dialog with the Orthodox, or any believer in rabbinical theology in the matrix of Torah interpretation. The fact is, the goddess cult, or the “Queen of Heaven” worship that is practiced in Israel’s neighborhoods, have strengthened the patriarchal and androcentric reaction (Falk 2001, pp. 131–32).24

It is now well acknowledged that the late fourth century was a crucial stage when female bodhisattvas were introduced in India as a result of the rise of the more open-minded Mahāyāna Buddhism. The introduction is taken to be a striking example of the triumph of the egalitarianism over misogyny in the common view of feminist Buddhologists.25 However, a feminine Avalokiteśvara had never existed in Indian tradition. It is a Chinese creation. Of the existing binaries of feminist explanation that work on Indian culture, that is, profaning sexuality vs. motherly asexuality, androcentric Theravada vs. egalitarian Mahāyāna, and misogyny vs. androgyny (Gross 1993, pp. 55–84), few work on the explanation of the Avalokiteśvara cult in China. Interestingly, Dianna Paul again offers a simple, straightforward interpretation of the popularity of a female Guanyin in Chinese social context without adopting profound feminist theory:

The woman’s concern with being childless and therefore considered unworthy of respect was as intense as a source of fear to her as were the environmental and physical concerns of her male counterpart. Kuan-yin would alleviate a woman’s anxiety by ensuring that a “virtuous and wise son” or “an exceptionally refined daughter” would be forthcoming for the faithful devotee.26

Nevertheless, the question remains: does the deification of Avalokiteśvara as a female necessarily signify the elevation of women’s status? Was medieval Chinese spirituality truly so androgynous that the sexual transformation of Avalokiteśvara ought to be regarded as a symbol of China’s religious egalitarianism? José Ignacio Cabezón offers a different perspective. He finds “in the scriptures of the Mahāyāna several instances in which wisdom is identified as female, and more specifically as mother, whereas the less analytic and more emotive states that constitute ‘method,’ namely love, compassion, altruism, and so forth, are identified with the male or ‘father’.” (Cabezón 1992, p. 183). Cabezón reminds us that gender symbolism in Buddhism operates not as an index of social equality but as a hermeneutic device for distinguishing the twin virtues of the Mahāyāna—wisdom and compassion.

The outcome of this symbolic association, he suggests, was that Avalokiteśvara—an Indian deity embodying wisdom—came to be imagined in feminine terms. His position diverges from Yü’s assertion that “Avalokiteśvara is a symbol of compassion and Vajrapāṇi is a symbol of wisdom,”27 an interpretation consonant with Rita Gross, who places Avalokiteśvara on the “Compassion side” of the “Wisdom and Compassion Team.” (Gross 1993, p. 76). Confucian discourse, too, often constructs a dichotomy between wisdom and compassion. Wisdom, conventionally identified with talent (cai, 才), has been valorized as a distinctly masculine attribute, whereas compassion—linked to caregiving—was subsumed under the feminine virtue of moral potency (de, 德). Chun-fang claims to be neither a feminist theologian nor does she unconditionally accept or reject feminist theories.28 Espousing Cabezón’s methodology to “contextualize feminine symbols historically and sociologically,” she sophisticatedly discerns, embracing pluralism and avoiding polarizing the arguments. In viewing the Precious Scrolls, which some feminist scholars identify as “feminist documents,” Yü holds that, although she agrees that women are indeed the major actors in these scrolls, she cannot, however, take them as being “feminist.” The didacticism reflected from, and the morality advocated by, those Precious Scrolls, were not feminist at all, but, on the contrary, traditional and Confucian.29 Her conviction that “The presence of goddesses or feminine symbols in a religion does not translate into respect of real women in that culture. There is no necessary correlation between the veneration of goddesses and the status of women in societies that venerate goddesses.”30 The conviction derives not only from her exhaustive study of goddesses of Buddhism, but also from her relevant examination of female divinities in world religions, including the Virgin Mary.

A veteran researcher of Avalokiteśvara himself, Overmyer (2002, pp. 418–23) acknowledges that “Chun-fang Yü’s book is the most comprehensive study in any language of this important goddess.” Yü discusses the cult in all levels of society, from emperors to peasant villagers, from the beginning of the cult until the present, and from the foreign origin to its domestication in China. She examines and discusses the relationship between iconography and ritual and notes the connection between new types of devotional groups and changes in beliefs.

Given the vastness of materials, Yü’s organizing process must have been painstaking. However, readers only find ease and clarity in coming across those references. Yü should be accredited with the methodology she adopts: a rough chronological framework, the inclusion of varied genres of literature, a broad perspective, and a high regard for, and frequent visits to, fieldwork scholarship.

Among the many accolades Yü Chun-fang receives in China after the publication of the 2012 Chinese version (Yü 2012), Wang Dawei’s compliments are worth-noting. Wang, a researcher at the Institute of Daoism and Religious Culture, Sichuan University, speaks highly of Yü’s “gender vantage as a woman which renders the work fine and exquisite,” and that “the delicacy of a female scholar emitted in the academic and cultural writing” does not overflow so as to have caused her object attitudes to be overrun by personal feelings. He henceforth calls Yü’s research exemplary among all of the studies of the domestication history of Buddhism (Wang 2015).

4. Conclusions

In conclusion, Yü Chun-fang’s study of Avalokiteśvara provides a model for integrating gender and localization without ideological overstatement. Indeed, taking the enormity of the subject matter into consideration, the author has performed the job plausibly. The chapters of the book are not strictly organized according to chronological order but are centered on the domestication process. It asks, contemplates on, and answers the following question: “In what ways has Guanyin, the domesticated ‘Goddess of Mercy,’ affected Chinese religion?” Led by sound rationality and proven methods, Yü Chun-fang precedes with caution in a realm that is full of passionate discoursers and radical theologians. An advocate of rendering the worship of all goddesses, including that of the Avalokiteśvara, to their specific historical and social background, she shuns feminist interpretive biases that are common in present-day Buddhist studies, but not by sheer luck. Her methodological balance invites further comparative research on how religious discourses intersect in other cultural traditions.