(South and Central Asian mythology)
The Buddhist epitome of mercy and compassion. When Avalokitesvara attained to supreme consciousness, he chose not to pass into nirvana, but vowed to stay behind as the succour of the afflicted. He was filled with compassion, karuna, for the sufferings of the living, whom he ever seeks to bring to enlightenment. This is the Mahayana ideal of the bodhisattva, as opposed to the Hinayana goal of the arhat, the monk who has gained supreme knowledge. Whereas Sri Lanka followed the monastic tradition of Hinayana–the hard and lonely path of the isolate–there grew up in India the complicated iconography of the Mahayana bodhisattvas. When about 400 the Chinese pilgrim Fa-hsien visited the main Buddhist shrines of the Ganges valley, he witnessed public celebrations in which Avalokitesvara and other saints were treated as demigods. Along with images of the Buddha, they were paraded through city streets on elaborately decorated ceremonial carriages, accompanied by singers, musicians, and monks. Like the temple cars of Hindu deities, these carriages rose to a height of five storeys, overtopping all but the chief buildings and the city gateways.
Avalokitesvara was represented as a handsome young man holding a lotus flower in his left hand. Often he wore in his hair the picture of Amitabha, the bodhisattva who in Mahayana Buddhism virtually replaced Sakyamuni, the historical Buddha. The Chinese transformed Avalokitesvara into the goddess of mercy some time before the tenth century. The female consort of Avalokitesvara was Tara, also known as pandaravasini, ‘clad in white’, an attribute echoed in Kwan-yin, the Chinese transformation.
In Tibet it was the fortune of Avalokitesvara to become the national deity, where he is still incarnated in the person of the Dalai Lama, the most senior monk. On the death of a Dalai Lama the spirit of the god passes to a new-born child, who is identified and brought up within the Tibetan Church. However, Avalokitesvara has the divine power of assuming forms at will; his manifestations include a figure with eleven heads and one thousand arms, a fabulous cloud, and all manner of animals and people.
