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With great dexterity he erected a sort of clearing-house for both the corrupt Brahminism and corrupt Buddhism of his day, and exchanging and rearranging the gods and devils in both systems, he represented them as worshippers and supporters of the Buddha and Avalokitesvara. In such a system, the old primitive Buddhism of the noble eight-fold path of self-conquest and pure morals was utterly lost.
Avalokiteśvara is unknown to the Pali Canon and the Milinda Pañha. So far as I can discover he is not mentioned in the Divyâvadâna, Jâtakamâlâ or any work attributed to Aśvaghosha. His name does not occur in the Lalita-vistara but a list of Bodhisattvas in its introductory chapter includes Mahâkaruṇâcandin, suggesting Mahâkaruna, the Great Compassionate, which is one of his epithets.
Manjusri is the mythical author of this influential work, the twenty-fourth chapter being devoted to a glorification of the character, the power, and the advantages to be derived from the worship of Avalokitesvara. The Creation of Gods.
Hsüan Chuang's rendering Kwan-tzǔ-tsai expresses the same idea, but the more usual Chinese translation Kuan-yin or Kuan-shih-yin, the deity who looks upon voices or the region of voices, seems to imply a verbal misunderstanding. For the use of Yin or voice makes us suspect that the translator identified the last part of Avalokiteśvara not with Îśvara lord but with svara sound.
"Among those hypothetical beings the creations of a sickly scholasticism, hollow abstractions without life or reality the fourth Amitabha, 'Immeasurable Light, whose Bodhisatwa is Avalokitesvara, and whose emanation is Gautama, occupies of course the highest and most important rank.
Avalokitesvara, the Lord of View or All-sided One, is the personification of power, the merciful protector and preserver of the world and of men. Both are frequently and voluminously mentioned in the Saddharma Pundarika, in which the good law is made plain by flowers of rhetoric, and of which we shall have occasion frequently to speak.
The other name, Avalokitesvara, which means the Lord of View, "the lord who looks down from on high," instead of being a purely metaphysical invention, may he only an adaptation of one epithet of Shiva, which meant Master of View. Later and by degrees the attributes were separated and each one was personified.
While in Southern Buddhism the idea of this possibility of development seems to have been little seized upon and followed up, in Northern Buddhism as early as 400 A.D. the worship of two Buddhas elect named Manjusri and Avalokitesvara, or personified Wisdom and Power, had already become general.
Ghosts of the worship of centuries had followed them into exile; a thin, sweet odor of incense haunted the dusty place. "What would you call that?" asked the voice of the curio dealer. "I've been told it's the best of the lot." He pointed to a figure resting upon a triple golden lotos, Avalokitesvara: she "who looketh down above the sound of prayer."... Storms and hate give way to her name.
For example, the power of Avalokitesvara was separated from his protecting care and providence. His power was personified as the bearer of the thunder-bolt, or the lightning-handed one; and this new personification added to the two other Buddhas elect, made a triad, the first in Northern Buddhism.
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