Chinese Mythology · God / Legendary Figure
观音 · Guānyīn
The bodhisattva who hears every cry for help — the most revered figure in Chinese Buddhism.
观音
The name Guanyin means "Perceiver of the Sounds of the World" — the one who hears all cries for help. She is the Chinese form of the Buddhist bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, worshipped for compassion and deliverance from suffering, and revered as the patron of mothers, sailors, and the desperate. In Journey to the West she is the bodhisattva who recruits and guides the pilgrims.
The legend of Princess Miaoshan (妙善): a devout princess martyred by her father who attains enlightenment as Guanyin and gives up her own eyes and arms to heal him — the origin of her thousand-armed iconography.
Avalokiteśvara was originally depicted as male or gender-neutral in India; in China the figure was gradually feminized and, by about the Ming dynasty, worshipped overwhelmingly as female. The Japanese Kannon and Korean Gwan-eum are the same bodhisattva, not different gods.
The most widely worshipped deity in Chinese Buddhism and folk religion, with temples across the Chinese world.
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