The goddess cult influenced Buddhism even when it was adopted in China, and fused with local religious systems. To the lower classes the “Poosa”, who brings luck—that is, success and protection—may be either a Buddha or a goddess. The name is “a shortened form of the Sanskrit term Bodhisattwa”, and was originally “a designation of a class of Buddha’s disciples.… The ‘Poosa’ feels more sympathy with the lower wants of men than the Buddha (Fuh) does.”
One of the holy beings referred to in China as a “Poosa” is Kwan-yin, the so-called “goddess of mercy”. Dr. Joseph Edkins[27] says that “this divinity is represented sometimes as male, at others as female.… She is often represented with a child in her arms, and is then designated the giver of children. Elsewhere she is styled the ‘Kwan-yin who saves from the eight forms of suffering’ or ‘of the southern sea’, or ‘of the thousand arms’, &c. She passes through various metamorphoses, which give rise to a variety in names.”
KWAN-YIN, THE CHINESE “GODDESS OF MERCY”
From a porcelain figure decorated in soft enamels in the Victoria and Albert Museum
The “Poosa” of Buddhism or the ancient Chinese faith is a powerful protector. Dr. Edkins tells that “Chinese worshippers will sometimes say, for example, that they must spend a little money occasionally to obtain [[272]]a favour of Poosa, in order to prevent calamities from assailing them. I saw”, he relates, “an instance of this at a town on the sea-coast near Hangchow. The tide here is extremely destructive in the autumn.[28] It often overflows the embankment made to restrain it, and produces devastation in the adjoining cottages and fields. A temple was erected to the Poosa Kwan-yin, and offerings are regularly made to her, and prayers presented for protection against the tide.”
A vision of this Chinese Aphrodite was beheld about two years before the British forces captured Canton. “The governor of the province to which that city belongs”, says Dr. Edkins, “was engaged in exterminating large bands of roving plunderers that disturbed the region under his jurisdiction. He wrote to the Emperor on one occasion a dispatch in which he said that, at a critical juncture in a recent contest, a large figure in white had been seen beckoning to the army from the sky. It was Kwan-yin. The soldiers were inspired with courage, and won an easy victory over the enemy.”
Edkins notes that “the principal seat of the worship of Kwan-yin is at the island of Poots”. Here the deity “takes the place of Buddha, and occupies the chief position in the temples”. There are many small caves on the island dedicated to the use of hermits. “In several of them, high up on a hill-side”, Dr. Edkins “noticed a small figure of Buddha”. Here we have an excellent instance of “culture-mixing” in China in our own day.
Shang-ti, the personal god who rules in the sky, is to the Chinese Buddhists identical with Indra, the Hindu god of thunder and rain. In India Indra was in Vedic times the king of the gods, but in the Brahmanic Age became a lesser being than Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu. [[273]]When Buddha was elevated to the godhead these great deities shrank into minor positions. In China they stand among the auditors of the supreme Buddha, as he sits on the lotus flower, and “occupy”, as Edkins found, “a lower position than the personages called Poosa, Lohan, &c.”[29]
In the next chapter it will be found that floating myths were attached to the memories of mythical and legendary monarchs in China, and that not a few of these myths resemble others found elsewhere. [[274]]