[26] Just as the Lankâvatâra sûtra purports to have been delivered at Lankapura-samudra-malaya-śikhara rendered in the Chinese translation as "in the city of Lanka on the summit of the Malaya mountain on the border of the sea."
[27] See Foucher, Iconographie bouddhique, 1900, pp. 100, 102.
[28] Varamudra.
[29] These as well as the red colour are attributes of the Hindu deity Brahmâ.
[30] A temple on the north side of the lake in the Imperial City at Peking contains a gigantic image of him which has literally a thousand heads and a thousand hands. This monstrous figure is a warning against an attempt to represent metaphors literally.
[31] Waddell on the Cult of Avalokita, J.R.A.S. 1894, pp. 51 ff. thinks they are not earlier than the fifth century.
[32] See especially Foucher, Iconographie Bouddhique, Paris, 1900.
[33] See especially de Blonay, Études pour servir à l'histoire de la déesse bouddhique Târâ, Paris, 1895. Târâ continued to be worshipped as a Hindu goddess after Buddhism had disappeared and several works were written in her honour. See Raj. Mitra, Search for Sk. MSS. IV. 168, 171, X. 67.
[34] About the time of Hsüan Chuang's travels Sarvajñâmitra wrote a hymn to Târâ which has been preserved and published by de Blonay, 1894.
[35] Chinese Buddhists say Târâ and Kuan-Yin are the same but the difference between them is this. Târâ is an Indian and Lamaist goddess associated with Avalokita and in origin analogous to the Saktis of Tantrism. Kuan-yin is a female form of Avalokita who can assume all shapes. The original Kuan-yin was a male deity: male Kuan-yins are not unknown in China and are said to be the rule in Korea. But Târâ and Kuan-yin may justly be described as the same in so far as they are attempts to embody the idea of divine pity in a Madonna.