How a god became a goddess.
She is called upon in storms at sea and in the silence of grief, in temples from Hangzhou to Los Angeles. Kuan Yin, the goddess of mercy, is one of the most worshipped figures on earth. Few of her devotees know that she began as a man: Avalokite?vara, a male bodhisattva from India, whose transformation into a Chinese goddess has puzzled scholars for centuries.
Kuan Yin: The Eternal Goddess of Compassion reconstructs that thousand-year journey. It follows the bodhisattva east along the trade routes, through the legend of princess Miaoshan that made her Chinese, the pilgrimage island of Mount Putuo, and the paintings that fixed her white-robed form, into the temples of contemporary China and Taiwan, drawn throughout from the sources themselves.
Behind the serene face on a thousand altars is a longer and stranger history than most of her worshippers have ever been told.
