The Thousand-armed Manjusr at Dunhuang and

Paired Images in Buddhist Visual Culture

michelle c. wang
Georgetown University

Abstract
The Thousand-armed Manjusr is an enigmatic form of the bodhisattva that appeared primarily in the Mogao cave
shrines in northwestern China. There, the deity was nearly always paired with the Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara
on opposite walls or on opposite sides of a doorway. Curiously, this pairing is absent from any of the Buddhist sutras
associated with the two. This article argues that texts were a starting point rather than an end point for the establish-
ment of the Thousand-armed Manjusrs iconographic characteristics, and that the pairing of the two deities is crucial
for understanding the gaps between the deitys textual description and its visual representation.

keywords: Thousand-armed Manjusr, Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara, Manjusr, Avalokitesvara, Mt. Wutai,

Dunhuang, Mogao caves, mural painting, Buddhist painting, Buddhist art, esoteric Buddhism, Huayan Buddhism

Introduction qianbo Wenshushili pusa [here-

after the Thousand-armed Manjusr], Fig. 1) and exam-

T he nature of the dialogue between text and image

has consistently challenged scholars of Buddhist
visual culture. At the Mogao cave shrines in
Dunhuang , Gansu Province , in north- after the Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara], Fig. 2). The
western China, the mural paintings from nearly five
hundred cave shrines are joined by more than fifty thou-
sand manuscripts and portable paintings recovered in
the early twentieth century from the so-called library
cave, Mogao Cave 17. Previous scholarship interro-
gated the relationship between a particular genre of
popular narrative literature known as bianwen
(transformation text), as represented in the Dunhuang
manuscript cache, and Buddhist pictorial compositions
called bianxiang (transformation tableaux), which
are preserved in the mural paintings of the Mogao
cave shrines. Challenging the then-prevailing scholarly
assumption that transformation tableaux served as visual
aids for oral recitations of transformation texts, Wu
Hung argued persuasively for the crucial distinctions
between literary and pictorial narratives, concluding
not only that it was unlikely that transformation tableaux
served as visual aids, but also that their innate pictorial
logic in turn shaped the composition of transformation
texts.1
But what about the relationship between Buddhist
texts and painted icons? This essay explores the pictorial
logic of mural paintings depicting Manjusr of the
Thousand Arms and Thousand Begging Bowls (Qianbi
ines the reasons behind its pairing with Avalokitesvara
of the Thousand Arms and Thousand Eyes (Qianshou
qianyan Guanshiyin pusa [here-
little-studied Thousand-armed Manjusr appeared in the
Mogao cave shrines only from the Tang (618907)
to Song dynasties (9601279).2 Commonly associated
with wisdom, Manjusr was one of the major bodhisattvas
of the Buddhist pantheon. Commonly depicted as a young
prince, his new representation as a thousand-armed deity
was a significant departure from the standard human
form in which he had hitherto been portrayed in mural
paintings of the Mogao cave shrines. The thousand-
armed form of Manjusr was nearly always paired with
the Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara on the opposite
walls or on the opposite sides of the doorway of a
Mogao cave shrine. For this reason, any study of the
Thousand-armed Manjusr must by necessity coincide
with a consideration of its pairing with the Thousand-
armed Avalokitesvara.
A larger outcome of studying the pairing of the
Thousand-armed Manjusr and Avalokitesvara is a con-
sideration of the problems of studying Buddhist images
in relation to Buddhist texts. While the Thousand-armed
Manjusr is known from one sutra preserved in the Sino-
Japanese Buddhist canon, it does not clearly explain
Manjusrs pairing with Avalokitesvara or certain aspects
of its iconography. Furthermore, our examination of
82 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART

Fig. 1. Thousand-armed Manjusr, Mogao Cave 14, north wall, Tang dynasty, mid-9thearly 10th century. Dunhuang, China, mural
painting. From Liang Weiying, Dunhuang shiku yishu: Mogao ku di shisi ku (wan Tang) (Nanjing: Jiangsu meishu chubanshe, 1996),
pl. 124. By permission of the Dunhuang Research Academy.

Buddhist texts pertinent to the Thousand-armed Manjusr
is limited by a lack of extant manuscript copies of this
sutra from the Dunhuang corpus.3 I contend that in the
case of the Thousand-armed Manjusr, texts were a
starting rather than an end point for the establishment
of the deitys iconographic characteristics. The gaps be-
tween the deitys textual description and visual repre-
sentation were subsequently filled in by its pairing with
the Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara.
 MICHELLE C. WANG  The Thousand-armed Manjusr at Dunhuang 83

Fig. 2. Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara, Mogao Cave 14, south wall, Tang dynasty, mid-9thearly 10th century. Dunhuang, China,
mural painting. From Liang Weiying, Dunhuang shiku yishu: Mogao ku di shisi ku (wan Tang) (Nanjing: Jiangsu meishu chubanshe,
1996), pl. 94. By permission of the Dunhuang Research Academy.
84 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART

Manjusr as Paired and Independent Deity

The earliest extant images of the Thousand-armed Man-

jusr are attributed to mid-Tang paintings at Dunhuang.
In one representative painting, the most characteristic
features of the Thousand-armed Manjusr are the arms
that fan around his body and the begging bowls supported
in each hand. A tiny figure of Sakyamuni Buddha (Shijia
fo ) emerges from the begging bowls that are held
in front of the body and in the innermost layer of hands
(Fig. 3). The arrangement of Manjusrs arms is striking
in its similarity to Avalokitesvara (see Fig. 2), the only
other Buddhist deity commonly depicted with a thou-
sand arms. In their conventional forms, Manjusr and
Avalokitesvara had not previously appeared as an obvi-
ous pair in Chinese visual culture, so the matching of
their thousand-armed forms in the Mogao cave shrines
is noteworthy.
Of the seventeen mural paintings of the Thousand-
armed Manjusr, fourteen are paired with the Thousand-
armed Avalokitesvara.4 By contrast, of the forty instances
of the Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara found in the
Mogao cave shrines from the high Tang onward, nearly
one-third appear as an independent icon.5 All of this
leads to the following questions: For what reasons
was it imperative for the lesser-known Thousand-armed Fig. 3. Detail of Sakyamuni Emerging from Begging Bowl,
Manjusr to appear alongside the more popular Thousand- Thousand-armed Manjusr, Mogao Cave 14, north wall, Tang
armed Avalokitesvara? What did it mean for an icon dynasty, mid-9thearly 10th century. Dunhuang, China, mural
to exist, as did the Thousand-armed Manjusr, almost painting. From Liang Weiying, Dunhuang shiku yishu: Mogao
ku di shisi ku (wan Tang) (Nanjing: Jiangsu meishu chubanshe,
always as half of a pair? Was the pairing of the two 1996), pl. 126. By permission of the Dunhuang Research
based on Buddhist sutras, as was the case in the pairing Academy.
of Manjusr with other figures?
The pairing of the Thousand-armed Manjusr and
Avalokitesvara on facing walls is particularly apparent and Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara on the north and
at Dunhuang. It is unclear whether there were earlier south walls of cave shrines to the location of their
precedents in Changan . The Lidai minghua ji earthly abodes of Mt. Wutai to the north and
(Record of famous painters of successive dy- Mt. Putuo in the south.10 Lai, on the other
nasties) and Sitaji (Record of temples and hand, observed that both the Thousand-armed Manjusr
pagodas) both record a painting of the Thousand-armed and Avalokitesvara shared associations with Vairocana
Manjusr by Yuchi (Weichi) Yiseng ,6 a painter (Piluzhena fo ).11 I argue instead that the
of Khotanese origin who lived in Changan during the most convincing explanation may be attributed to
second half of the seventh century, on the west wall of conceptual overlaps between the cults of Manjusr and
the pagoda of Ciensi .7 However, neither makes Avalokitesvara. Our examination of Dunhuang mural
note of the motif on the facing wall, and there is con- paintings will shed light on how the convergence of
fusion over whether this painting may in fact have their roles as savior deities capable of corporeal trans-
represented the Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara.8 formation resulted in the visual conventions of the
The pairing of the Thousand-armed Manjusr and iconography of the Thousand-armed Manjusr and his
Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara has been noted in the pairing with the Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara.
past; however, only Lu Jianfu and Lai Pengju In earlier examples of Manjusr paired with another
have speculated on the reasons for it.9 Lu attrib- figure, however, it was Manjusrs long-standing asso-
uted the placement of the Thousand-armed Manjusr ciation with wisdom that received the greatest emphasis.
 MICHELLE C. WANG
Fig. 4. Manjusr from the Vimalakrti Sutra, Mogao Cave 420,
west wall, Sui dynasty. Dunhuang, China, mural painting. From
Dunhuang wenwu yanjiusuo, ed., Zhongguo shiku: Dunhuang
Mogaoku, vol. 2 (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 198287), pl. 68.
By permission of the Dunhuang Research Academy.
In these contexts, Manjusr was treated as an interlocutor,
as a spokesperson of the Buddha, and as one who has the
power to convert other sentient beings to Buddhism.12
These associations come into sharp relief in narrative
illustrations based on the Vimalakrti Sutra and the
Gandavyuha chapter of the Avatamsaka Sutra.
In
the Vimalakrti Sutra (Weimojie suoshuo jing
, T475), Manjusr is paired with the lay-
man Vimalakrti (Weimojie ) in the climactic dia-
logue scene. Residing in Vaisal in northeastern India,
where he used his vast resources to relieve the poor and
lived an austere lifestyle, Vimalakrti feigned illness
as an expedient pretext for lecturing the visitors who
inquired about his health on Buddhist teachings, in
particular, the meanings of nonduality and emptiness.13
When Sakyamuni learned of the situation, he asked
his ten major disciples in turn to visit Vimalakrti; all
declined and it was only Manjusr, symbolizing the
perfection of wisdom, who agreed to the request. The
two appear in seventy-four mural paintings of the Vima-
lakrti Sutra tableaux in the Mogao cave shrines from
the Sui dynasty onward.14 In a mural painting from
Mogao Cave 420, the two are shown seated opposite
one another in dialogue (Figs. 4, 5). In this painting,
 The Thousand-armed Manjusr at Dunhuang 85
Fig. 5. Vimalakrti from the Vimalakrti Sutra, Mogao Cave
420, west wall, Sui dynasty. Dunhuang, China, mural painting.
From Dunhuang wenwu yanjiusuo, ed., Zhongguo shiku:
Dunhuang Mogaoku, vol. 2 (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1982
87), pl. 69. By permission of the Dunhuang Research Academy.
Manjusr and Vimalakrti are seated within pavilions
and face one another in a three-quarter profile surrounded
by equal numbers of attendants, creating compositional
symmetry between the two groups.
Manjusr was also frequently paired with Saman-
tabhadra (Puxian pusa ), who was associated
with universal good, inside the doorway to cave shrines
or on either side of the west wall niche in a total of
109 Mogao cave shrines from the early Tang onward
(Figs. 6, 7).15 Similar to the pairing with Vimalakrti,
Manjusr and Samantabhadra are arranged in three-
quarter profile. Seated on a lotus pedestal atop a lion
and elephant, respectively, they are attended by a re-
tinue consisting of a groom, musicians, pennant-bearing
bodhisattvas, and heavenly kings. The arrangement of
86 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART
Fig. 6. Manjusr, Mogao Cave 14, north side of entrance, east
well, Tang dynasty, mid-9thearly 10th century. Dunhuang,
China, mural painting. From Liang Weiying, Dunhuang shiku
yishu: Mogao ku di shisi ku (wan Tang) (Nanjing: Jiangsu
meishu chubanshe, 1996), pl. 115. By permission of the
Dunhuang Research Academy.
figures once again creates compositional symmetry. The
two figured prominently in the Gandavyuha chapter
(Ru fajie pin ) of the Avatam saka Sutra (
Huayanjing) as the first and final spiritual mentors
visited by the boy pilgrim Sudhana (Shancai tongzi
) and, as a result, the most important attendants
to Vairocana Buddha.16 The initial encounter between
Manjusr and Sudhana takes place when the young
boy listens to Manjusrs sermon on the attainment of
Buddhahood.17 With his mind set on following the
bodhisattva path, Sudhana subsequently pays heed to
Manjusrs advice to seek out other teachers.18 He then
returns to Manjusr before his visit to the very last of the
fifty-three spiritual mentors: Samantabhadra.19
The image of Manjusr seated on a lion in the pair-
ing with Samantabhadra pertains to the so-called true
presence (zhenrong ) image of the deity, which is
believed to have originated on Mt. Wutai as the result
of an artists visionary experience. Despite the existence
of earlier images, the original true presence image
is generally attributed to the sculptor An Sheng
Fig. 7. Samantabhadra, Mogao Cave 14, south side of
entrance, east wall, Tang dynasty, mid-9thearly 10th century.
Dunhuang, China, mural painting. From Liang Weiying,
Dunhuang shiku yishu: Mogao ku di shisi ku (wan Tang)
(Nanjing: Jiangsu meishu chubanshe, 1996), pl. 107. By
permission of the Dunhuang Research Academy.
during the Jingyun era (71011) of the Tang
dynasty. Having been commissioned by the monk Fayun
of Da Huayansi on Mt. Wutai to make
a statue of Manjusr, An Sheng was uncertain of his
ability to produce an icon of the bodhisattva without
being able to observe his true image (zhenxiang ).
After offering incense and carrying out the proper sup-
plications, An Sheng finally saw a vision of Manjusr
seated on the back of a lion. As a result of this divine
encounter with the deity, he was able to successfully
complete the sculpture.20 Although the original sculp-
ture no longer exists, two eighth-century sculptures from
Shanxi Province preserve the main iconographic charac-
teristics of the true presence image, which may be
described as Manjusr seated on a lotus blossom on the
back of a lion and accompanied by a groom.21
The true presence image also informs the new-
style image Manjusr first seen in Mogao Cave 220
(Fig. 8), the context in which Manjusr was represented
as an independent deity at Dunhuang. A cartouche on
the right side identifies the image as the true presence
 MICHELLE C. WANG
Fig. 8. New-style Manjusr, Mogao Cave 220, north wall of
corridor, Five Dynasties period, 925. Dunhuang, China, mural
painting. From Dunhuang wenwu yanjiusuo, ed., Zhongguo
shiku: Dunhuang Mogaoku, vol. 5 (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe,
198287), pl. 20. By permission of the Dunhuang Research
Academy.
of the Great Sage Manjusr.22 The cave shrine, origi-
nally constructed in the year 642 as the family cave
of the Zhai clan, a prominent local family, under-
went several periods of reconstruction and overpainting,
most prominently the third reconstruction in 925 as
overseen by Zhai Fengda , a ninth-generation
descendant of the original donors.23 Although its precise
origins are unclear, the new-style Manjusr (xinyang
Wenshu ) is defined by the sole emphasis on
Manjusr and the frontal position of Manjusrs body
seated upon the lion mount. Another distinguishing
characteristic of the new-style Manjusr is the repre-
sentation of the trailing clouds that support Manjusr
and his retinue. Identified in the accompanying dedica-
tory inscription as an auspicious image (ruixiang ),
this particular image falls within a lineage of famous
icons, including those described in the Dunhuang manu-
scripts, that were believed to have literally come flying
through the air on the clouds to their present locale.24
The frontal-facing new-style Manjusr is distin-
guished from the three-quarter profile seen in earlier
paired images of the deity as associated with the Vima-
lakrti Sutra and the Gandavyuha. Moreover, the new-
with two attendants stand-
style Manjusr was grouped
ing on either side, similar to the paired figures flanking
 The Thousand-armed Manjusr at Dunhuang 87
Buddha icons; in this case, Manjusrs attendants were
Sudhana and the king of Khotan. The frontality and
independence of the new-style Manjusr is further
underscored by the placement of attendant bodhisattvas
on the left and right, flanking the new-style Manjusr
triad.25 Some of these qualities, in particular the hieratic
position of Manjusrs body, are reflected in the ap-
pearance of the Thousand-armed Manjusr. Unlike the
new-style Manjusr, however, the Thousand-armed
Manjusr was always paired at Dunhuang with another
deity.
The Creation of the Thousand-armed Manjusr
The creation of the thousand-armed form of Manjusr
drew on conventional associations of the bodhisattva
with wisdom and his ability to arouse bodhicitta (puti
xin ), or the thought of awakening, in sentient
beings. Other associations with the cult of Manjusr
centered on Mt. Wutai also appear, such as the salvific
qualities of the deity. These characterizations appear in
the only existing sutra pertaining to the Thousand-armed
Manjusr, the Sutra of the Mahayana Yoga of the Ada-
mantine Ocean, Manjusr of the Thousand Arms and
Thousand Begging Bowls, Great King of Tantras (Da-
cheng yujia jingang xinghai Manshushili qianbi qianbo
dajiaowang jing
[hereafter Sutra of the Thousand-armed Man-
jusr]), the translation of which is attributed to Amogha-
vajra (Bukong Jingang , 705774) and his
Silla disciple Hyecho (Huichao , active 8th c.).26
The appearance of the Thousand-armed Manjusr is
described in the following passage at the beginning of
the Sutra of the Thousand-armed Manjusr:
In the midst of the ocean of dharmadhatu nature of
Vairocana tathagata, [that is] the secret vajradhatu
lotus pedestal stored in the world ocean, there is the
great holy one, Manjusr bodhisattva. His body
appears golden, and from his body emanates a
thousand arms, a thousand hands, and a thousand
begging bowls. From the begging bowls appear a
thousand Sakyamuni Buddhas. The Sakyamuni
Buddhas further manifest ten trillion Sakyamuni
Buddhas.27
Reinforced in the iconography described above,
Manjusrs role as the mother and father of buddhas
is echoed several times throughout the Sutra of the
Thousand-armed Manjusr. For example, Vairocana
Buddha announces to Sakyamuni and the gathered as-
sembly that Manjusr was his teacher from the distant
88 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART
past who instructed him in the teachings of the adaman-
tine secret bodhi method (jingang mimi putifa
).28 This language is repeated elsewhere in the
sutra, in which Manjusr states that for one whose original
intention is awakening, if he aspires to be Manjusrs
son, Manjusr will then always be his mother.29 Manjusr Chinese monks gradually came to identify Manjusr
is also described as the mother of all Buddha-tathagatas
of countless millions of numerous realms.30 Finally,
Manjusr is identified as the teacher of all bodhisattvas.31
Such characterizations of Manjusr are vividly conveyed
in the tiny figures of Sakyamuni emerging from the
begging bowls (see Fig. 3).
Elsewhere in the sutra, the salvific qualities of Man-
jusr receive special emphasis. It is stated that those who
recall the name of Manjusr will have their sins eradi-
cated. Furthermore, the third of the ten great vows of
the Thousand-armed Manjusr promises benefits to all
sentient beings who revere and recollect the bodhisattva,
including the stirring of bodhicitta.32 Although the
goal of the Sutra of the Thousand-armed Manjusr is
supreme enlightenment (wushang dao ) rather than
rebirth in a pure land specifically, the great vows of
Manjusr clearly emphasize his ability to foster bodhi-
citta in those who have committed even the most griev-
ous offenses, including murder, hunting, and fishing,
and those who have committed various sins causing
them to be consigned to hell with no recourse.33
As will be further discussed, the emphasis in images
of the Thousand-armed Manjusr, particularly when
paired with the Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara, likely
placed stress on the salvific qualities of Manjusr that
were emphasized in the Mt. Wutai cult that flourished
from the seventh century onward. The cult of Manjusr
addressed anxieties centering on the age of the final
dharma that was believed to begin roughly one thou-
sand years after the death of Sakyamuni Buddha, during
which time Buddhism would fall into decline and none
would be able to attain enlightenment.34 In the absence
of Sakyamuni Buddha, it was believed that whoever
heard the name Manjusr or saw his image would re-
ceive benefits, including the promise of being reborn in
a pure land.35 The advantage of being reborn in a pure
land was the potential for receiving Buddhist teachings
and insights directly from a Buddha, thereby expediting
ones progress toward enlightenment. More immediately,
Manjusr himself was associated with a pure land, his
earthly abode of Mt. Wutai in northern China.
Located in Shanxi Province , Mt. Wutai
was identified in the Tang dynasty as the pure land of
Manjusr.36 It was believed that in the period of the
decline of the dharma, Manjusr would reside on this
mountain.37 This followed a prediction made in the
Manjusr Parinirvana Sutra that Manjusr would appear
at the Mountain of Snows four hundred and fifty
years after the parinirvana (niepan ), or death of
Sakyamuni.38 Although this mountain must originally
have been conceived as one located in the Himalayas,
with Mt. Wutai in China, perhaps because the mountain
was known to be snowy even during the summer heat.39
Despite the lack of extant images of the Thousand-
armed Manjusr at Mt. Wutai before the Ming dynasty
(13681644), the Sutra of the Thousand-armed Manjusr
had strong associations with the region.40 According to
the sutras preface, the Amoghavajras disciple Hyecho
took the translation of the sutra to Mt. Wutai in 780 in
order for it to be copied.41 While the circumstances of
the sutras authorship and translation are in question,
the sutra nevertheless seems to have achieved limited
circulation outside Mt. Wutai from the time of its
translation until 938, when the Southern Tang monk
Hengan traveled to Mt. Wutai and included the
sutra in his scriptural catalogue of 945.42 Given the
salvific nature of the cult of Manjusr on Mt. Wutai,
similar elements in the Sutra of the Thousand-armed
Manjusr may have received special emphasis in the
transmission of the Thousand-armed Manjusr to Dun-
huang. How, then, was this expressed visually? In order
to answer this question, we turn next to a closer look
at the pairing of the Thousand-armed Manjusr and
Avalokitesvara at Dunhuang and, in particular, icono-
graphic elements that were borrowed from Avalokites-
vara and transferred onto Manjusr, thus enabling the
visual articulation of the latters multivalent qualities
and associations.
Paired Images and Borrowed Iconography
A Mogao cave shrine typically consists of an antechamber
connected to a larger main chamber into which the
sculptural icons were, by the Tang dynasty, generally
placed inside a niche located on the rear wall (Fig. 9).
The paired Thousand-armed Manjusr and Avalokitesvara
paintings appeared most frequently on the north and
south walls of the main chamber or on opposite sides
of the doorway on the east wall. During the eighth
century, it became commonplace for several transfor-
mation tableaux separated by painted textile borders,
typically featuring a Buddha as the main deity, to ap-
pear on the north and south walls of the main chamber.
In the mid-Tang Cave 360, the Thousand-armed Manjusr
painting appeared alongside the Buddha-centered trans-
formation tableaux (Fig. 10); in other cave shrines,
the Thousand-armed Manjusr and Avalokitesvara ap-
 MICHELLE C. WANG
Fig. 9. Diagram of Mogao cave shrine, Tang dynasty.
Dunhuang, China. From Dunhuang wenwu yanjiusuo, ed.,
Zhongguo shiku: Dunhuang Mogaoku, vol. 3 (Beijing: Wenwu
chubanshe, 198287), 239. By permission of the Dunhuang
Research Academy.
peared as the sole icons on the north and south walls.
Another area of the cave shrine in which the pair com-
monly appeared was the north and south walls of the
antechamber.
In only two cases is the Thousand-armed Manjusr
clearly paired in the Mogao caves with a deity other
than the Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara.43 In those
examples, the Thousand-armed Manjusr is paired or
grouped instead with Sakyamuni or other forms of Ava-
lokitesvara. In Cave 360, a Thousand-armed Manjusr
appears on the north wall facing a Sakyamuni mandala
(Fig. 11). In Cave 205, a Five Dynasties period painting
of the Thousand-armed Manjusr appears on the west
slope of the antechamber ceiling, with Cintamanicakra
(Ruyilun Guanyin ), a form of Avalokitesvara
holding the wish-fulfilling jewel, on the north slope and
Amoghapasa (Bukong juansuo Guanyin ),
a form of Avalokitesvara holding a lasso to draw de-
votees near, on the south slope.
The major iconographic characteristics of the
 The Thousand-armed Manjusr at Dunhuang 89
Thousand-armed Manjusr tableaux are represented in
a mural painting located on the north wall of Mogao
Cave 14, dated to the late Tang dynasty, in which the
deity is seated on a lotus pedestal atop Mt. Sumeru
(Xumi shan ), the central mountain of Buddhist
cosmology, rising from a vast body of water with the
bodies of two naga kings (longwang ) coiled about
it (see Fig. 1). The sun and moon bodhisattvas, Surya-
prabha (Riguang pusa ) and Candraprabha
(Yueguang pusa ), respectively, appear in the
uppermost left and right corners of the composition.
The red disk encircling Suryaprabha represents the sun,
and the white disk encircling Candraprabha represents
the moon. Four armor-clad guardian figures known as
heavenly kings (tianwang ) appear on either side of
Manjusr, along with two additional guardian deities,
the flame-ringed brilliant kings (mingwang ) of
the lowermost left and right corners. Together with
fourteen attendant bodhisattvas, a total of twenty-two
figures encircle the mandorla of Manjusr.
In his study of bianxiang, Wu Hung noted transfor-
mations in the pairing of figures within the Subjugation
of Raudraksa tableaux in the Mogao cave shrines from
the Northern Zhou to Tang dynasties.44 Early versions
of the mural painting presented the story of the magical
contest between the Buddhists, represented by Sari-
putra (Shelifu ), and the heretics, represented by
Raudraksa (Laoducha ), in a linear fashion which
privileged the narrative structure of the tale. In the Tang
dynasty, however, a new compositional mode appeared
in which the placement of figures began to follow spatial
rather than narrative logic. The images were now divided
into two groups, each centered on one of the two oppos-
ing characters, Sariputra and Raudraksa. Furthermore,
pairs of audience members that were absent from the
textual source were added in order to create balance
and underscore the compositional symmetry between
the opposed figures.45 As elucidated by Ikumi Kaminishi
in examples of Japanese narrative painting, this demon-
strates the principle that written texts should be viewed
properly as pre-text rather than the context to
images.46
The same principle can be observed in the pairing of
Manjusr with Vimalakrti (see Figs. 4 and 5). Although
based on a textual source, the pairing of Vimalakrti
and Manjusr introduced elements not present in the
Vimalakrti Sutra, similar to the Subjugation of Rau-
draksa murals. Specifically, these elements are the
of the foreign kings and their retinue who appear
figures
behind Vimalakrti. In the sutra, there are no kings
present; in fact, Vimalakrti had emptied the room
of all his attendants in anticipation of the arrival of
90 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART

Fig. 10. Thousand-armed Manjusr (left), Mogao Cave 360, Fig. 11. Sakyamuni mandala (right), Mogao Cave 360, south

wall, Tang dynasty, late 8thmid-9th century. Dunhuang, China,
north wall, Tang dynasty, late 8thmid-9th century. Dunhuang,
China, mural painting. 6 The Lo Archive. mural painting. 6 The Lo Archive.

Fig. 13. Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara, Mogao Cave 144,

south side of entrance, east wall, Tang dynasty, late 8thmid-9th
Fig. 12. Thousand-armed Manjusr, Mogao Cave 144, north century. Dunhuang, China, mural painting. From Peng Jinzhang,
side of entrance, east wall, Tang dynasty, late 8thmid-9th Dunhuang shiku quanji 10: Mijiao huajuan (Hong Kong:
century. Dunhuang, China, mural painting. From Peng Jinzhang, Commercial Press, 2003), pl. 40. By permission of the Dunhuang
Dunhuang shiku quanji 10: Mijiao huajuan (Hong Kong: Research Academy.
Commercial Press, 2003), pl. 37. By permission of the Dunhuang
Research Academy.
 MICHELLE C. WANG
Fig. 14. Thousand-armed Manjusr, Mogao Cave 361, south
side of entrance, east wall, Tang dynasty, late 8thmid-9th
century. Dunhuang, China, mural painting. From Peng Jinzhang,
Dunhuang shiku quanji 10: Mijiao huajuan (Hong Kong:
Commercial Press, 2003), pl. 44. By permission of the Dunhuang
Research Academy.
Manjusr with his retinue of bodhisattvas and dis-
ciples.47 Therefore, the addition of figures attending
Vimalakrti introduced compositional symmetry between
the two.
A related dynamic is evident in paintings of the
Thousand-armed Manjusr. The basic iconographic fea-
tures of the Thousand-armed Manjusr described in the
Sutra of the Thousand-armed Manjusr remain con-
sistent from painting to painting. However, there is
considerable variation in the numbers and types of
Manjusrs attendant figures, and also between the
attendant figures in the retinues of Manjusr and Avalo-
kitesvara, none of which are described in the sutra. For
example, in the mid-Tang Mogao Cave 144 painting of
Thousand-armed Manjusr (Fig. 12), the total number
of attendant figures is twelve, far fewer than those
accompanying the Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara di-
rectly opposite (Fig. 13), which total eighteen. Similarly,
the paintings of the Thousand-armed Manjusr (Fig. 14)
and Avalokitesvara (Fig. 15) in the mid-Tang Mogao
Cave 361 display different numbers of attendant figures.
The Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara is surrounded by
 The Thousand-armed Manjusr at Dunhuang 91
Fig. 15. Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara, Mogao Cave 361,
north side of entrance, east wall, Tang dynasty, late 8thmid-9th
century. Dunhuang, China, mural painting. Courtesy of the
Dunhuang Research Academy.
fourteen attendants, whereas ten figures accompany the
Thousand-armed Manjusr.
Within a century, however, the Thousand-armed
Manjusr and Avalokitesvara in the late-Tang Mogao
Cave 14 (see Figs. 1 and 2) both have twenty-two atten-
dant figures, although not all are identical. Furthermore,
the two are painted in a similar style, with heavy model-
ing of the face and body and with identical crowns,
haloes, and jewelry. In the even later Xixia period Mogao
Cave 30, Manjusr (Fig. 16) and Avalokitesvara (Fig. 17)
are now shown standing with the same numbers and
types of attendants (ten), the same wavy pattern in the
halo, and comparable treatment of the jeweled canopy
above their heads. The standing position of Manjusr
is unprecedented, although it was not uncommon for
the various forms of Avalokitesvara to be depicted in
this manner from the Northern and Southern Dynasties
period onward. The end result of the treatment of the
Thousand-armed Manjusr and Avalokitesvara was to
cause the two to appear more like one another. In addi-
tion to standardizing the numbers and types of atten-
dant figures and figural painting style, another means
of doing so was to adopt iconographic motifs from the
Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara.
One of the clearest signs that the iconography of the
Thousand-armed Manjusr incorporated visual elements
of the Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara is the inser-
tion of figures that had no previous association with
Manjusr into his retinue. In Mogao Cave 144, for
example, the female deity Sr Devi (Gongdetian, ,
92 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART
Fig. 16. Thousand-armed Manjusr, Mogao Cave 30, south
side of entrance, east wall, Xixia period. Dunhuang, China,
mural painting. From Peng Jinzhang, Dunhuang shiku quanji
10: Mijiao huajuan (Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 2003),
pl. 201. By permission of the Dunhuang Research Academy.
left) and the male sage Rsi Vasu (Posouxian ,
of the Thousand-armed
right) appear on either side
Manjusr at shoulder height (see Fig. 12); the pair
Fig. 17. Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara, Mogao Cave 30,
north side of entrance, east wall, Xixia period. Dunhuang,
China, mural painting. From Peng Jinzhang, Dunhuang shiku
quanji 10: Mijiao huajuan (Hong Kong: Commercial Press,
2003), pl. 200. By permission of the Dunhuang Research
Academy.
are commonly featured in the iconography of the
Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara but have no clear
association with Manjusr.48 In the painting of the
Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara directly opposite, Sr
Devi and Rsi Vasu appear at the base of the mandorla
 MICHELLE C. WANG
Fig. 18. Amitabha Buddha, detail from Thousand-armed
Manjusr, Mogao Cave 14, north wall, Tang dynasty, mid-9th
early 10th century. Dunhuang, China, mural painting. From
Liang Weiying, Dunhuang shiku yishu: Mogao ku di shisi ku
(wan Tang) (Nanjing: Jiangsu meishu chubanshe, 1996), pl. 125.
By permission of the Dunhuang Research Academy.
(see Fig. 13). The sun and moon bodhisattvas in the
upper left and right corners also originate from the
iconography of Avalokitesvara, particularly in paintings
from Central Asia and Dunhuang.49
The most significant of the adopted motifs, how-
ever, is the small figure of Amitabha Buddha (Amituo
fo ) that appears in the headdress of each deity
(Figs. 18, 19). This motif is not mentioned in the Sutra
of the Thousand-armed Manjusr and originates in
the iconography of Avalokitesvara, reflecting the bodhi-
sattvas close association with Amitabha, the Buddha of
the Western Pure Land. Other shared iconographic ele-
ments are the bodies of water in the foreground of each
painting, also a common feature in Pure Land paintings
(Figs. 20, 21).
In the narrative context, images of Manjusr paired
with Vimalakrti or Samantabhadra were displayed in
three-quarter profile and the attendant figures were
arranged in order to achieve compositional symmetry.
The Thousand-armed Manjusr and Avalokitesvara, in
contrast, were depicted facing forward. Their attendant
figures were not arranged as mirror images, unlike the
pairing of Manjusr with Vimalakrti or Samantabhadra.
 The Thousand-armed Manjusr at Dunhuang 93
Fig. 19. Amitabha Buddha, detail from Thousand-armed
Avalokitesvara, Mogao Cave 14, south wall, Tang dynasty,
mid-9thearly 10th century. Dunhuang, China, mural painting.
From Liang Weiying, Dunhuang shiku yishu: Mogao ku di shisi
ku (wan Tang) (Nanjing: Jiangsu meishu chubanshe, 1996),
pl. 95. By permission of the Dunhuang Research Academy.
For example, in Mogao Caves 361 (see Figs. 14 and
15), the sun bodhisattva in the red disk occupies the
upper left corner and the moon bodhisattva occupies
the upper right corner of the Thousand-armed Manjusr
and Avalokitesvara paintings. Below the moon bodhi-
sattva in each painting is an attendant figure playing
a lute. The sun and moon bodhisattvas are similarly
arranged in the upper left and right corners of the paint-
ings in the later Mogao Cave 30 (see Figs. 16 and 17).
In sum, paintings of the Thousand-armed Manjusr
and Avalokitesvara were composed differently from the
pairing of Manjusr with Vimalakrti and Samantabha-
dra in narrative paintings. In narrative pairings, com-
positional symmetry was achieved through the pre-
sentation of the attendant figures, which resulted in a
mirror-image effect. In contrast, the iconographic pair-
ing of the Thousand-armed Manjusr and Avalokitesvara
adopted figures and iconographic motifs conventionally
associated with Avalokitesvara. The end result of this
was to make the two deities appear similar but not
as mirror images of each other. Furthermore, certain
details of the Thousand-armed Manjusr paintings had
no textual basis but were visually patterned after images
of Avalokitesvara.
Basing the modeling of certain Buddhist figures on
94 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART
Fig. 20. Detail, Thousand-armed Manjusr, Mogao Cave 14,
north wall, Tang dynasty, mid-9thearly 10th century. Dun-
huang, China, mural painting. From Liang Weiying, Dunhuang
shiku yishu: Mogao ku di shisi ku (wan Tang) (Nanjing: Jiangsu
meishu chubanshe, 1996), pl. 124. By permission of the
Dunhuang Research Academy.
Fig. 21. Detail, Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara, Mogao
Cave 14, south wall, Tang dynasty, mid-9thearly 10th century.
Dunhuang, China, mural painting. From Liang Weiying,
Dunhuang shiku yishu: Mogao ku di shisi ku (wan Tang)
(Nanjing: Jiangsu meishu chubanshe, 1996), pl. 94. By permis-
sion of the Dunhuang Research Academy.
others is known in later, though better-charted, examples
pertaining to the deified imperial Japanese Buddhist
patron Prince Shotoku (ca. 573622). Narrative paint-
ings and icons of Prince Shotoku (Shotoku taishi
) from medieval Japan (ca. 12th16th c.) include
numerous instances of clear quotations from the tex-
Fig. 22. Sakyamuni and Prabhutaratna Inside the Many
Treasures Stupa, Northern Wei dynasty, 518. China, gilt bronze,
25.5  16.7 cm, Musee Guimet (EO 2604). Photograph 6
Gianni Dagli Orti/The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.
tual and visual narratives about Sakyamuni, providing
strong evidence for a Buddha-mimesis that compen-
sated for Sakyamuni Buddhas absence in Japan while
simultaneously drawing on his spiritual authority in
order to bolster the cult of Prince Shotoku.50 The asso-
ciation between Prince Shotoku and Sakyamuni may
have been established as early as the seventh century, in
an inscription carved on the back of the mandorla of the
main Buddha icon in Horyuji, which stated that the
sculpture of Sakyamuni Buddha was made according
to the bodily measurements of Prince Shotoku.51 The
medieval Japanese examples include the mapping of
Sakyamunis eight great life events onto those of Prince
Shotoku, as well as sculptural double images in which
the iconography of the two was marked by common
elements such as the treatment of garments, hairstyle,
and bodily position.52 The patterning of Prince Shotoku
after Sakyamuni is a powerfully instructive example for
our examination of the Thousand-armed Manjusr and
Avalokitesvara, foregrounding their status not only as
paired, but also as double images.
 MICHELLE C. WANG
Fig. 23. Avalokitesvara Flanked by the Thirty-Three Transfor-
mations and Relief from Perils, Mogao Cave 45, south wall,
Tang dynasty, 8th century. Dunhuang, China, mural painting.
From Dunhuang wenwu yanjiusuo, ed., Zhongguo shiku:
Dunhuang Mogaoku, vol. 3 (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1982
87), pl. 131. By permission of the Dunhuang Research Academy.
Despite the pairing of the Thousand-armed Manjusr
and Avalokitesvara, the latter curiously does not play
any particular role in the Sutra of the Thousand-armed
Manjusr, either in the standard two- or thousand-armed
forms. Rather, it is the bodhisattva Samantabhadra who
is paired with Manjusr in the Sutra of the Thousand-
armed Manjusr, underscoring its debt to the Avatamsaka
Sutra. The prominence accorded to Manjusr and Sa-
mantabhadra is evident from the opening lines of the
Gandavyuha, when the two lead a retinue of five thou-
sand bodhisattvas into the Jeta grove in order to receive
the Buddhas teachings.53 In the Sutra of the Thousand-
armed Manjusr, Samantabhadra and Manjusr play
similar roles as leaders of the bodhisattva assembly.54
If the Sutra of the Thousand-armed Manjusr was
not the basis for the pairing of the Thousand-armed
Manjusr and Avalokitesvara, where else might we look
for the source of inspiration? Try as we may, we cannot
find a clear-cut basis in either the texts associated with
the Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara or in other Buddhist
sutras in which either Manjusr or Avalokitesvara figured
prominently. The two crossed paths in certain widely
circulated Buddhist sutras, as will be discussed below,
but the emphasis was generally placed on one or the
other and not on their joint appearance.
In the various canonical texts associated with the
Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara, Manjusr appears only
twice.55 In the Dharan Sutra of Avalokitesvara Bodhi-
sattva of the Thousand Hands and Eyes, and Vast,
Complete, Unobstructed Great Compassionate Heart
(Qianshou qianyan Guanshiyin pusa guangda yuanman
 The Thousand-armed Manjusr at Dunhuang 95
wuai dabeixin tuoluoni jing
T1060 [hereafter Dharan Sutra
of the Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara]), attributed to
Bhagavadharma (Jiafandamo , mid-7th c.),
Manjusr appears as one of the bodhisattvas in the large
assembly gathered to hear the Buddha preach.56 In the
Ritual Commentary on the Mandala of the Unobstructed
Great Compassionate Heart Dharan Sutra (Shewuai
dabeixin da tuoluoni jingji yifa zhongchu wuliangyi nan-
fang manyuan butuoluohaihui wufu zhuzun deng hong-
shili fangwei ji weiyi xingse zhichi sanmoya piaozhi
mantuluo yigui
T1067), attributed to Amog-
havajra (705774), Manjusr appears in a thirty-three-
deity mandala.57 In neither case is Manjusr paired with
the Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara, unlike the joining of
Manjusr and Samantabhadra in the Gandavyuha or
the grouping of Avalokitesvara with Mahasthamaprapta
in the Pure Land sutras.58
Similarly, Avalokitesvara appears in the Vimalakrti
Sutra but plays only a minor role in the text, appearing
simply as one member of a large assembly gathered to
hear the Buddha speak and not figuring elsewhere in
the sutra.59 Manjusr, in turn, appears in the Lotus
Sutra, although his role was markedly different from
the one played by Avalokitesvara. Whereas Avalokitesvara
takes on the role of salvific responder, Manjusrs role is
related to teaching and instruction. For example, when
questioned by Maitreya in the introduction of the Lotus
Sutra, Manjusr acts as a teacher to the gathered assem-
bly after the Buddha has entered into a state of con-
centration.60
Manjusr and Avalokitesvara also appear concurrently
in the Lotus Sutra as the first two bodhisattvas of those
gathered in the large assembly at the beginning of the
introduction.61 Curiously, the apparent textual pairing
of the two was eclipsed visually in China by images of
the paired Buddhas of past and present inside the Many
Treasures Stupa (Fig. 22), originating from the Appari-
tion of the Jeweled Stupa chapter of the Lotus Sutra,62
and the transformations of Avalokitesvara (Fig. 23).
The Universal Gateway chapter notes the ability of
Avalokitesvara to respond to the call of those in need
and undergo thirty-three transformations.63 From the
very beginning, bodily transformation was a significant
aspect of the cult of Avalokitesvara, and these transfor-
mations were a significant part of the transmission of
Avalokitesvara across Asia.64 Corporeal transformation
was also a key aspect of the cult of Manjusr centered
on Mt. Wutai as it emerged during the Tang Dynasty,
culminating in the dramatic appearance of the bodhi-
96 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART
Fig. 24. Thousand-armed Manjusr, Mogao Cave 99, south
wall, Five Dynasties period. Dunhuang, China, mural painting.
6 The Lo Archive.
sattvas thousand-armed form. Transformation is, in
fact, key to understanding the pairing of the two deities.
Convergences: Bodhisattva Cults and Savior
Deities
Although the complementary nature of wisdom (Manjusr)
and compassion (Avalokitesvara) might appear to be an
obvious reason behind the pairing of these deities, the
visual evidence demonstrates that the iconographic pair-
ing of the Thousand-armed Manjusr and Avalokitesvara
was distinct from earlier narrative pairings, which had
underscored different qualities in counterpoint (bodhi-
sattva versus layperson, wisdom versus universal virtue),
and instead emphasized latent commonalities through
the mapping of iconographic motifs of Avalokitesvara
onto images of Manjusr. This, in turn, reflected their
converging roles during the Tang dynasty as savior
deities who were capable of manifesting in different
corporeal forms. Such conceptual overlaps in the cults
of Manjusr and Avalokitesvara, more than any indi-
vidual textual source, were probably responsible for the
pairing of their thousand-armed forms, as well as the
simultaneous mapping of iconographic attributes of
Avalokitesvara onto images of Manjusr.
With this in mind, one of the most intriguing ap-
pearances of the Thousand-armed Manjusr at Dun-
huang is in Mogao Cave 99 (Fig. 24), dating to the
Five Dynasties period (90760). On the south wall, the
painting of Manjusr is bracketed on the left and right
sides by scenes of the thirty-three transformations and
relief from peril, set against a landscape setting and
demarcated by cartouches. The painting of Thousand-
armed Avalokitesvara (Fig. 25) directly opposite is like-
Fig. 25. Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara, Mogao Cave 99,
north wall, Five Dynasties period. Dunhuang, China, mural
painting. 6 The Lo Archive.
wise flanked by scenes of the thirty-three transforma-
tions and relief from peril.65 Another striking aspect of
these paintings is that they occupy the entire surface of
the north and south walls and therefore, in addition to
the main sculptural Buddha icon, are the main motifs
of the cave shrines iconographic program. As in Mogao
Cave 99, the painting on the north wall of Mogao
Cave 54 (late Tang) also features the Thousand-armed
Manjusr as the sole motif flanked by paintings of relief-
from-peril scenes, with the Thousand-armed Avalokites-
vara located directly opposite.66
In the Lotus Sutra, Avalokitesvara was endowed
with the ability to respond to the call of those in need
and manifest in thirty-three guises, such as a king, a
great general, a monk or nun, even a young boy or girl,
or in any other human or nonhuman form.67 Mural
paintings from the Mogao cave shrines accordingly repre-
sent the transformations of Avalokitesvara and portray
the deity as the savior from perils (see Fig. 23). The
vignettes in the upper half of the painting flanking the
central figure of Avalokitesvara display the deitys
transformations and those in the lower part of the
painting depict the perils from which Avalokitesvara
saves devotees.
Although the salvific thirty-three transformations
and relief-from-peril motifs were conventionally asso-
ciated with Avalokitesvara, Manjusr as identified with
the Mt. Wutai cult was also identified as a savior figure
capable of granting devotees rebirth in a pure land,
particularly in the age of the final dharma.68 The promise
of rebirth in a pure land calls to mind the image of
Amitabha Buddha, who resides in the Western Pure
Land, inside the crown of the Thousand-armed Manjusr.
Such language, in turn, echoes the promise of assistance
 MICHELLE C. WANG
Fig. 26. Mt. Wutai Mural, Mogao Cave 61, west wall, Five Dynasties period. Dunhuang, China, mural painting. From Wei-cheng Lin,
Building a Sacred Mountain: The Buddhist Architecture of Chinas Mount Wutai (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press,
2014), pl. 8. Courtesy of Wei-cheng Lin, by permission of the Dunhuang Research Academy.
offered to devotees who call the name of Avalokitesvara in
the Lotus Sutra. The promise of rebirth in a Buddha land
and the expiation of sins also appears in the Dharan Sutra
of the Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara.69 Therefore, al-
though the Sutra of the Thousand-armed Manjusr
did not prescribe the pairing of the Thousand-armed
Manjusr with the Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara, the
benefits of devotion to Manjusr as described in the
sutra were comparable to those of the cult of Avaloki-
tesvara, a possible motivation for the pairing of the two
deities.
Furthermore, poems dedicated to Manjusr and Mt.
Wutai from the Dunhuang manuscripts illustrate the con-
cept of nirmanakaya (bianhua shen ), celebrating
the transformations and manifestations of Manjusr as
he appeared in the earthly form most suited to the needs
of his devotees.70 The urgency with which pilgrims de-
sired to view Manjusr in any of his guises was related
to the belief that the age of the final dharma had already
begun, and intensified hope in the salvific quality of
Manjusr in his pure land of Mt. Wutai.71 Poems from
the Dunhuang corpus explained that Manjusr was able
to appear as multi-colored rays of light or clouds and
mist, and he was also associated with the manifestation
of auspicious birds or a lion, the mount of Manjusr.72
Another of the forms in which Manjusr was able to
appear to devotees was an old man, a far cry from
his standard representation as the true presence
Manjusr.73
The associations of the Thousand-armed Manjusr
with Mt. Wutai have been noted earlier. Pilgrimage
routes connecting Mt. Wutai with Dunhuang may have
been responsible for the initial transmission of the
Thousand-armed Manjusr to Dunhuang. The frequent
interactions between the two regions are corroborated
in mural paintings in the Mogao cave shrines that have
Mt. Wutai as the main focus, and manuscripts from the
 The Thousand-armed Manjusr at Dunhuang 97
Dunhuang corpus pertaining to the Manjusr cult at Mt.
Wutai. The grandest of the Mt. Wutai mural paintings
at Dunhuang appears on the west wall of Mogao Cave
61, dating to the mid-tenth century (Fig. 26).74 Im-
portantly, the Mt. Wutai motif appears in two cave
shrines, 144 and 361, which also contain paintings of
the Thousand-armed Manjusr.75
As these two cave shrines represent the earliest period
of Thousand-armed Manjusr paintings at Dunhuang,
they provide us with crucial insight into how images of
the deity were incorporated into the iconographic pro-
grams of cave shrines. In Cave 144 (midlate Tang), the
Thousand-armed Manjusr and Avalokitesvara (see Figs.
12 and 13) appear on opposite sides of the doorway on
the east wall, and the Mt. Wutai painting appears on
the south side of the niche on the west wall (Fig. 27). In
Cave 361 (mid-Tang), the Thousand-armed Manjusr
and Avalokitesvara paintings (see Figs. 14 and 15) simi-
larly appear on the east wall, and the Mt. Wutai paint-
ing is located on the north side of the west wall niche
(Figs. 28, 29). What the Mt. Wutai paintings of Caves
144 and 361 share in common is that both represent
the true presence Manjusr seated on the back of a
lion and accompanied by his retinue as he descends,
cloud-borne, onto the mountain peaks. As Wei-cheng
Lin observes, these two paintings conflate what had
hitherto been two separate imagesthe representation
of Manjusr and the representation of the mountain
thus serving to relocalize the Mt. Wutai cult at Dun-
huang through pictorial means.76 Although the thousand-
armed form of Manjusr does not appear within a Mt.
Wutai backdrop, the concurrent appearance of the two
in the same cave shrines is highly suggestive for the
same reasons.
Moreover, the true presence Manjusr in Caves
144 and 361 is paired on the opposite side of the west
wall niche with Samantabhadra set in a mountain land-
98 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART

Fig. 28. Mt. Wutai Mural, Mogao Cave 361, west wall, Tang
dynasty, late 8thmid-9th century. Dunhuang, China, mural
painting. From Dunhuang wenwu yanjiusuo, ed., Zhongguo
shiku: Dunhuang Mogaoku, vol. 4 (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe,
198287), pl. 117. By permission of the Dunhuang Research
Academy.

Fig. 27. Mt. Wutai Mural, Mogao Cave 144, west wall, Tang
dynasty, late 8thmid-9th century. Dunhuang, China, mural
painting. Courtesy of the Dunhuang Research Academy.

scape representing Mt. Emei , the mountain in

Sichuan Province that was considered to be the bodhi-
sattvas earthly abode. Thus, within the same caves there
are two examples of Manjusr pairings: the true pres-
ence Manjusr and Samantabhadra, and the Thousand-
armed Manjusr and Avalokitesvara. The first pair places
emphasis on the standard true image of Manjusr, and
the second emphasizes his capacity for corporeal trans-
formation, both aspects of Manjusr that were associated
with his cult on Mt. Wutai.
The spiritual authority of true presence icons and Fig. 29. Diagram of Mt. Wutai Mural, Mogao Cave 361, west
images of Manjusr was attributed to the belief that they wall, Tang dynasty, late 8thmid-9th century. Dunhuang, China.
were modeled on the accurate likeness of the deity as Courtesy of Zhao Xiaoxing.
 MICHELLE C. WANG
he appeared to the first artisan ever to make such
an image.77 If the true presence image represented
the essential aspect of Manjusr, the Thousand-armed
Manjusr stood for something quite different, the bodhi-
sattvas endless potential for corporeal transformation.
As bodhisattvas of the tenth stage who possessed ad-
vanced spiritual achievement nearly comparable to that
of a Buddha, Manjusr and Avalokitesvara were endowed
with the ability to manifest themselves in different
forms.78 Furthermore, the mapping of the iconographic
attributes of the by-then better established Thousand-
armed Avalokitesvara onto those of Manjusr demon-
strates the means by which the latent qualities of the
latter were amplified and made fully visible, in contrast
to the conventional associations of Manjusr with wisdom
that were reinforced through his narrative pairing with
Vimalakrti or Samantabhadra.
Conclusion
The pairing of images was a common phenomenon in
the Mogao cave shrines (and indeed elsewhere in Buddhist
Asia), with the frequent pairing of transformation tab-
leaux based upon the Lotus Sutra and Avatamsaka
Sutra, among others, on the north and south walls of
the main chamber. As paired images, the Thousand-
armed Manjusr and Avalokitesvara were distinguished
not only by the complementary qualities of wisdom
and compassion, but also by their merging identities as
savior deities who were capable of embodying corporeal
transformations.
The pairing of the Thousand-armed Manjusr and
Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara must have diverged
from earlier examples of paired images of Manjusr
in the Buddhist visual culture of China, as it was not
attributable to any single textual source. Neither can
a basis for their pairing be found in the Sutra of the
Thousand-armed Manjusr. Rather, it likely resulted
from iconographic conventions that followed concep-
tual parallels between the two bodhisattvas. Recogni-
tion of the elements shared by the deities is significant,
as it challenges the notion that similarities between the
Thousand-armed Manjusr and Avalokitesvara were
simply the result of influence from the latter.79 Vari-
ous forms of Manjusr and Avalokitesvara offered bene-
fits to devotees who recalled their names, including the
promise of rebirth in a pure land. It is perhaps for this
reason that while the Thousand-armed Manjusr was
textually paired with Samantabhadra, he was visually
paired with the Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara. The
transformation of Manjusr into the thousand-armed
form was a phenomenon initiated in Buddhist texts but
 The Thousand-armed Manjusr at Dunhuang 99
was fully realized only in images that mapped icono-
graphic elements associated with Avalokitesvara onto
Manjusr.
Returning to questions posed at the beginning of
this essay regarding why the Thousand-armed Manjusr
was so frequently paired with the Thousand-armed
Avalokitesvara, we recall that the former appeared in
the Mogao cave shrines only as half of a pair rather
than as an independent icon. The salvific and transfor-
mative qualities of Manjusr were underscored visually
in the pairing with Avalokitesvara; had the Thousand-
armed Manjusr been presented as an independent icon,
those qualities might not have been apparent to devotees,
since it was a rarely painted and therefore relatively un-
familiar deity. Images of Manjusr paired with Vimalakrti
and Samantabhadra were far more prevalent at Dun-
huang. The salvific aspects of the cult of Manjusr on
Mt. Wutai were further reinforced in Mogao Caves
144 and 361 by the concurrent presence of paintings of
the sacred mountain and in Mogao Caves 54 and 99 by
the inclusion of the thirty-three transformations and
relief-from-peril scenes. The thousand-armed form of
Manjusr, one might say, represented his full potential
not only for transformation, but also for salvation.
Through the pairing of the Thousand-armed Manjusr
with the Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara, this message
was made unmistakably clear.
Michelle C. Wang is Assistant Professor in the Depart-
ment of Art and Art History at Georgetown University.
She is the author of Changing Conceptions of Mandala
in Tang China: Ritual and the Role of Images, Material
Religion 9, no. 2 (2013), and Buddhist Art and Archi-
tecture of East Asia in The Blackwell Companion to
East and Inner Asian Buddhism (2014). She is currently
completing a book manuscript titled Mandalas in the
Making: The Visual Culture of Esoteric Buddhism
at
Dunhuang. [mcw57@georgetown.edu]
Notes
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the South-
east Early China Roundtable (2011) and Association for
Asian Studies Annual Conference (2012). For their inspir-
ing papers and discussion, I would like to thank my fellow
SEECR participants, especially Keith Knapp and Mario
Poceski, and my co-chair for the AAS panel Seeing
Double? Paired Imagery in Buddhist Art in China, Karen
Hwang-Gold, along with panel members Chun-fang Yu,
Tamami Hamada, Kate Lingley, and discussant Amy
McNair. I gratefully acknowledge the generous feedback
that I received on various drafts of this paper from
Michael Radich, Cynthia Col, David Quinter, Al Acres,
100 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART

two anonymous reviewers for this journal, and in particu- Bowlsare absent from the following catalogues of Dun-
lar Stanley Abe. My thanks also go to Wei-cheng Lin, huang manuscripts: Dunhuang yanjiuyuan ,
Akiko Walley, Anne Feng, and Jin Tao for their assistance ed., Dunhuang yishu zongmu suoyin xinbian
in obtaining image permissions. Research for this article (Catalogue and index of the collected Dun-
was generously supported by grants from the Association huang manuscripts, new edition) (Beijing: Zhonghua
for Asian Studies and Asian Cultural Council. shuju, 2000); Jacob Dalton and Sam van Schaik, Tibetan
1. Wu Hung, What is Bianxiang?On the Relation- Tantric Manuscripts from Dunhuang: A Descriptive Cata-
ship between Dunhuang Art and Dunhuang Literature, logue of the Stein Collection at the British Library (Leiden
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 52, no. 1 (June 1992): and Boston: Brill, 2006); Marcelle Lalou, Inventaire des
16770. Manuscrits tibetains de Touen-houang conserves a la
2. Discussion of the Thousand-armed Manjusr is ab- Bibliotheque Nationale (Fonds Pelliot tibetain), 3 vols.
sent from the standard sources on Manjusr and tantric (Paris: Bibliotheque Nationale, 193961); and Louis de la
Buddhist art, such as Etienne Lamotte (Manjusr, Toung Vallee Poussin, Catalogue of the Tibetan Manuscripts
Pao, 2nd ser., vol. 48, no. 1/3 [1960]: 196) and Marie- from Tun-Huang in the India Office Library (Oxford:
Therese de Mallman (Introduction a liconographie du Tan- Oxford University Press, 1962).
trisme Bouddhique [Paris: Librairie Adrien-Maisonneuve, 4. This data was collated from Dunhuang wenwu
1975]). Extant paintings and sculptures of this unusual yanjiusuo , ed., Dunhuang Mogaoku neirong
and little-studied form of the bodhisattva Manjusr, with zonglu (General catalogue of the con-
a thousand arms holding begging bowls from which tents of the Mogao cave shrines at Dunhuang) (Beijing:
Sakyamuni emerges, exist primarily in China, despite cir- Wenwu chubanshe, 1982). Another notable pairing of
culation of the related sutra and iconographic material the two deities is in a large ninth-century silk painting of
elsewhere in Asia. Although scriptural sources for the Bhaisajyaguru (Yaoshi fo ) from Dunhuang (British
Thousand-armed Manjusr are known in Japan and Korea Museum 1919,0101,0.36 [Stein no. Ch.lii.003]), in which
(Robert M. Gimello, Cheng Kuan on the Hua-yen Trinity, the Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara and Manjusr appear
Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal 9 [1996]: 4025, n. 67), and in the upper left and upper right corners. See Roderick
it is recorded in an eighteenth-century Nepalese book of Whitfield, Art of Central Asia: The Stein Collection in the
iconographic drawings (Lokesh Chandra, Dictionary of British Museum, 3 vols. (Tokyo: Kodansha International,
Buddhist Iconography, 15 vols. [New Delhi : International in cooperation with the Trustees of the British Museum,
Academy of Indian Culture and Aditya Prakashan, 1999 198285), 1:3026. This is the only extant portable paint-
2005], 8:2239), there are no clear-cut extant images of the ing featuring the pairing of the two deities in which they
deity with multiple arms other than in China. According lack the elaborate retinues of the mural paintings. Chih-
to Lu Jianfu, a Sanskrit manuscript of the 108 names of hung Yen has hypothesized that the reason for the group-
the Thousand-armed Manjusr was brought to Japan by ing was that the three deities offered similar benefits to
Kukai in 805 (Lu Jianfu , Qianbo Wenshude devotees, including saving them from peril. See Chih-hung
chansheng jiqi yingxiang [The Yen, Bhaisajyaguru at Dunhuang, Ph.D. diss., University
emergence of Manjusr of a Thousand Bowls and its in- of London, 1997, 7980, 8587. See also Sun, Wenshu
fluence], Wutaishan yanjiu 3 [1994]: 7). Sun pusa tuxiangxue yanjiu, 3233.
Xiaogang has argued that a Kamakura period (1185 I have recently been made aware of a large painting on
1333) Japanese painting traditionally attributed as Maitreya silk in the State Hermitage Museum, collected during the
bodhisattva should be reattributed as the Thousand-armed Russian Turkestan expeditions, of the Thousand-armed
Manjusr (Sun Xiaogang , Wenshu pusa tuxiangxue Manjusr surrounded by members of his retinue. It would
yanjiu [A bodhisattva of wisdom be interesting to speculate on whether a comparable paint-
iconography study] [Lanzhou: Gansu renmin meishu chu- ing of the Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara existed in order
banshe, 2007], 34 and color pl. 20). In this painting, mul- to form a pair with the Thousand-armed Manjusr. I thank
tiple Buddhas fill the mandorla behind Maitreyas body. Maria Menshikova for sharing this information with me.
However, the Buddhas do not emerge from begging bowls, 5. This information is collated from Dunhuang
as is standard in images of the Thousand-armed Manjusr. yanjiuyuan, Dunhuang Mogao ku neirong zonglu. Peng
Perhaps due to the limited circulation of images, the Jinzhang notes that there are a total of fifty-seven mural
Thousand-armed Manjusr remains a fairly obscure figure paintings of the Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara at Dun-
in the scholarship on Buddhist studies and Buddhist art, huang, including other sites such as the Yulin and Western
treatment of which has not progressed further than the Thousand Buddhas cave shrines; see Peng Jinzhang ,
identification of the scriptural source and cataloguing of Qianyan zhaojian qianshou huchiDunhuang mijiao
mural paintings. jingbian yanjiu zhi san
3. The primary doctrinal texts associated with the (A thousand eyes looking, a thousand hands pro-
Thousand-armed Manjusrthe Sutra of the Thousand- tectingStudies on esoteric buddhist transformation tab-
armed Manjusr and Eulogy on the One Hundred and leaux at Dunhuang, part 3), Dunhuang Yanjiu 1
Eight Names of Manjusr of the Thousand Begging (1996): 2021.
 MICHELLE C. WANG
6. For information on Yuchis background, see Toshio
Nagahiro, On Wei-chih I-seng: A Painter of the Early
Tang Dynasty, Oriental Art 1, no. 2 (1955): 7074. In
addition to the Ciensi painting, Yuchi was credited with
mural paintings in several other monasteries in Changan.
See William Reynolds Beal Acker, Some Tang and Pre-
Tang Texts on Chinese Painting (Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1954), 26263, 272, 290, 35657. In the Lidai minghua
ji, Yuchi was considered to be representative of the Tang
dynasty; see Acker, Some Tang and Pre-Tang Texts on
Chinese Painting, 198. In the Tangchao minghua lu, he
was placed in the Inspired Class, Bottom Grade. See
Alexander C. Soper and Chu Ching-hsuan, Tang Chao
Ming Hua Lu: The Famous Painters of the Tang Dynasty,
Archives of the Chinese Art Society of America 4 (1950): 5
28, esp. 11.
7. See Duan Chengshi (d. 863), Sitaji
(Record of monasteries and pagodas) (Beijing: Renmin
meishu chubanshe, 1964), juan 2, 3132, and Zhang
Yanyuan (active mid-9th c.), Lidai minghua ji
(Record of famous painters of successive dynasties)
(Beijing: Renmin meishu chubanshe, 1963), juan 3, 50. For
an English translation of the latter, see Acker, Some Tang
and Pre-Tang Texts on Chinese Painting, 259. See also
Sun, Wenshu pusa tuxiangxue yanjiu, 29.
8. The slightly earlier Tangchao minghua lu, however,
states that the Ciensi pagoda contained an image by Yuchi
of the Thousand-armed and Thousand-eyed Compas-
sionate One (Qianshouyan dabei )another
appellation for the Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara, but
without specifying on which wall it was painted. See Zhu
Jingxuan (active 8th c.), Tangchao minghua lu
(Record of famous painters of the Tang dynasty)
(Chengdu: Sichuan meishu chubanshe, 1985), 9. For an
English translation, see Soper and Chu, Tang Chao
Ming Hua Lu, 11. Dorothy Wong believes that the paint-
ing actually depicted the Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara,
rather than the Thousand-armed Manjusr; see Dorothy
Wong, Early Transmission of Esoteric Images from China
to Japan in the Seventh and Eight Centuries, Huaxue 9
(2008): 16971719, esp. 1725.
9. See Gauri Devi, Iconography of the Thousand-
Armed Manjusr, in Cultural Horizons of India: Studies
in Tantra and Buddhism, Art and Archaeology, Language
and Literature, ed. Lokesh Chandra and Tara Chandrika,
7 vols. (New Delhi: International Academy of Indian
Culture and Aditya Prakashan, 1990), 6:58; Matsumoto
Eiichi , Tonkoga no kenkyu (Studies Art, Religion, and Politics in Medieval China: The Dun-
on Dunhuang painting), 2 vols. (Tokyo: Toho bunka
gakuin, 1937), zuzo hen , 649; Peng Jinzhang ,
ed., Mijiao huajuan (Esoteric Buddhist paintings)
(Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 2003), 63; and Sun, Wen-
shu pusa tuxiangxue yanjiu, 30.
10. Lu, Qianbo Wenshude chansheng ji qi yingxiang,
10.
11. Lai Pengju , Dunhuang shiku zaoxiang
sixiang yanjiu (A study of the earthly abode of Manjusr during the Tang dynasty and a
 The Thousand-armed Manjusr at Dunhuang 101
thoughts in the images in Mogao caves at Dunhuang) (Bei-
jing: Wenwu chubanshe, 2009), 274.
12. See Anthony Tribe, Manjusr: Origins, Role, and
Significance (Parts 12), Western Buddhist Review 2
(1997), sec. 2: Manjusrs Role in Mahayana Literature
(no pagination).
13. Burton Watson, trans., The Vimalakirti Sutra
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). Vimalakrti
is first introduced in the second chapter and his encounter
with Manjusr takes place in the fifth chapter.
14. Dunhuang wenwu yanjiusuo, Dunhuang Mogaoku
neirong zonglu, 22223, 23839.
15. Ibid., 22223. According to Sun Xiaogang, the
pairing of Manjusr and Samantabhadra is found primarily
in the Mogao caves. See Sun, Wenshu pusa tuxiang yanjiu,
4549.
16. There are two full-length translations of the Ava-
tamsaka Sutra: in addition to the sixty-fascicle translation
by Buddhabhadra (T278), ca. 420, there is also an eighty-
fascicle translation by Siksananda, ca. 699 (T279). In
these translations, the Gandavyuha was the final chapter;
it circulated independently in India as a separate text. A
forty-fascicle translation of ca. 800 consisting of only the
Gandavyuha chapter was completed by Prajna (T293).
17.
T279:332a26333b26. For an English translation,
see Cleary, trans., The Flower Ornament Scripture: A
Translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra (Boston: Shambhala,
1993), 1173.
18. T279:333b27334a17. For an English translation,
see Cleary, The Flower Ornament Scripture, 1179.
19. T279:439b6444c29. For an English translation,
see Cleary, The Flower Ornament Scripture, 150218.
20. Wei-cheng Lin, Building a Sacred Mountain: The
Buddhist Architecture of Chinas Mount Wutai (Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 2014), 9698. For a full
translation of the relevant passage regarding An Sheng
in the Extended Records of Mount Clear-and-Cool
(Guang qingliang zhuan , T2099), a mountain
gazetteer written by the monk Yanyi ca. 1060, see
Lin, Building a Sacred Mountain, 2045. Lin acknowl-
edges that true presence images of Manjusr had already
appeared before the eighth century, perhaps as early as
the sixth century. See also Sun, Wenshu pusa tuxiangxue,
3645.
21. Lin, Building a Sacred Mountain, 9697.
22. Ibid., 176.
23. Mogao Cave 220 is the subject of Ning Qiang,
huang Cave of the Zhai Family (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 2004). For an account of Zhai Fengda, see
7681.
24. Lin, Building a Sacred Mountain, 17276.
25. The origins of the new-style Manjusr have been
contested by scholars; Rong Xinjiang and Sun Xiaogang
have argued that the iconography originated from Mt.
Wutai, a mountain range that became identified as the
102 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART

major center of devotion to Manjusr. However, scholars we see not only the standard references to Manjusr as
of the Dunhuang Cultural Artifacts Research Academy the bodhisattva of wisdom, but also newer connotations
believe that the new-style Manjusr actually originated associating the bodhisattva with state protection. Among
from Khotan. See Jiang Li , Qianxi Dunhuang xin- the translated epithets, none pertains to Avalokitesvara. See
yang Wenshu zaoxiang chansheng de yuanyuan Devi, Iconography of the Thousand-Armed Manjusr,
(A primary analysis of the 60, and Rolf W. Giebel, The One Hundred and
origins of the production of new-style Manjusr images Eight Names of Manjusr: The Sanskrit Version of the
at Dunhuang), Mei yu shidai 1 (2010): 6769, Manjusrkumarabhuta-astottarasatakanama Based on Sino-
esp. 69, and Sha Wutian , Dunhuang P.4049 xin- Japanese Sources, Indo ronrigaku
kenkyu
yang Wenshu huagao ji xiangguan wenti yanjiu 3 (2011): 30343.
P.4049 (A study of the 27. T1177A:725b6725b8. Similar descriptions are
sketch of the new-style Manjusr in Dunhuang P.4049 provided elsewhere in the sutra; for example, see
and related issues), Dunhuang yanjiu 3 (2005): T1177A.748c310.
2632, esp. 27. 28. T1177A:725b918. I am grateful to David
26. The putative account of the translation of the Quinter for this reference.
Sutra of the Thousand-armed Manjusr is provided in 29. T1177A:734a2223.
the preface (T1177A:724b8724c16), which posits that 30. T1177A:750c8.
Hyecho, a monk from Silla who came to reside in Changan, 31. T1177A:725c14.
began studying the sutra in 733. After eight years, the 32. T1177A:726b28c2; T20.1177A:729b1011.
translation of the sutra was initiated by the Indian monk 33. T1177A:726b9727a24.
Vajrabodhi (671741) in 741, shortly after which the 34. See Jan Nattier, Once Upon a Future Time: Studies
latter died. At Vajrabodhis final request, translation work in a Buddhist Prophecy of Decline (Berkeley, CA: Asian
ceased after his death and the original Sanskrit manuscript Humanities Press, 1991), esp. 65118.
was sent back to India in 742. The sutra is unaccounted 35. See T463:481a28b10. The Manjusr Parinirvana
for until NovemberDecember 774, when Hyecho committed Sutra (Wenshushili banniepan jing ,
to translating it under Amoghavajra (T1177A:724b27 T463) is conventionally attributed as a translation by Nie
29). Since Amoghavajra died in July 774, the extent of his Daozhen dated ca. 280312, but further study and
acquaintance with the sutra is questionable (Han-Sung comparisons with other contemplation sutras now suggest
Yang et al., trans. and ed., The Hye-Cho Diary: Memoir a revised date of the late fourth to the fifth century. For
of the Pilgrimage to the Five Regions of India [Berkeley, a comprehensive study of this text, see David Quinter,
CA: Asian Humanities Press; Seoul: Po Chin Chai, Visualizing the Manjusr Parinirvana Sutra as a Contem-
Ltd., 1984], 16). Furthermore, the Sutra of the Thousand- plation Sutra, Asia Major, 3d series, 23, pt. 2 (2010): 97
armed Manjusr is not listed among the sutras presented 128, esp. 11728.
by Amoghavajra to Emperor Daizong in 771 36. Robert M. Gimello, Chang Shang-ying on Wu-tai
(T52.2120.839a27840a11). Certain Japanese scholars Shan, in Pilgrims and Sacred Sites in China, ed. Susan Na-
suggest that the Sutra of the Thousand-armed Manjusr quin and Chun-fang Yu (Berkeley: University of California
was an apocryphal sutra composed in China rather than Press, 1992), 100, and Tansen Sen, Buddhism, Diplomacy,
a bona fide translation; the evidence for this includes and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations,
portions of the text that appear to echo language and 6001400 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003),
concepts found in other Buddhist sutras such as the 7779. Raoul Birnbaum argues that the marked promi-
Avatamsaka Sutra, Brahmas Net Sutra, Vajrasekhara Sutra, nence of Manjusr in the Tang dynasty coincided with the

and Mahavairocana Sutra. See Osabe Kazuo , bodhisattvas important role in the Gandavyuha chapter
Todai mikkyoshi zakko (Miscellaneous
of the Avatamsaka Sutra as a spiritual mentor to the boy
studies on the history of esoteric Buddhism during the
pilgrim Sudhana. He further notes that in the late Tang,
Tang dynasty) (Kobe: Kobe Shoka Daigaku Gakujutsu tales of miracles concerning Manjusr began to appear, a
Kenkyukai, 1971), 11518. A second scriptural source, significant number of sutras focusing on Manjusr were
though not a sutra, for the Thousand-armed Manjusr is added to the Chinese Buddhist canon, and great monks
the brief Eulogy on the One Hundred and Eight Names of (such as Amoghavajra) were associated with the bodhi-
Manjusr of the Thousand Begging Bowls (T1177B). This sattva. See Raoul Birnbaum, Studies on the Mysteries of
unattributed Sanskrit manuscript is considered to date from Manjusr: A Group of East Asian Mandalas and Their
the Tang. Several of Manjusrs epithets relate to state Traditional Symbolism (Boulder, CO: Society for the Study
protection: ruler of a vast state, giver of the state, of Chinese Religions, 1983), 79. For a study of the his-
destroyer of the vanquished, towering over kings like tory of Mt. Wutai, see Lin, Building a Sacred Mountain.
a mountain. Others reinforce long-standing associations 37. Patricia Berger, Preserving the Nation: The
of Manjusr with wisdom (devoted to learning) and the Political Uses of Tantric Art in China, in Latter Days of
Avatamsaka Sutra (vast ocean). Within this manuscript, the Law: Images of Chinese Buddhism, 8501850, ed.

 MICHELLE C. WANG
Marsha Weidner (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press;
Lawrence: Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas,
1994), 89123, esp. 92.
38. For the prophecy concerning Manjusrs arrival at
the Mountain of Snows, see Quinter, Visualizing the
Manjusr Parinirvana Sutra, 109.
39. See Mary Anne Cartelli, The Five-Colored Clouds
of Mount Wutai: Poems from Dunhuang (Leiden and
Boston: Brill, 2013), 39, and Sen, Buddhism, Diplomacy,
and Trade, 7677. Moreover, the Five Peaks in Wutai
correlated with the original name of ManjusrPancasikha,
or Five Peaks. The Avatamsaka Sutra identifies the moun-
tain abode of Manjusr as the Clear, Cool Mountain
(Qingliang shan ), but this may have been an early
fifth-century interpolation by Buddhabhadra and his trans-
lation team (T278); see Lamotte, Manjusr, 7384, esp.
8182.
40. On this point, Sun Xiaogang and Lu Jianfu concur.
See Sun, Wenshu pusa tuxiangxue yanjiu, 29, and Lu,
Qianbo Wenshude chansheng ji qi yingxiang, 12. Lu
even goes so far as to posit that the Thousand-armed Man-
jusr originated at Mt. Wutai, after which it was trans-
mitted to Changan and finally Dunhuang.
41. T1177A:724b8724c16.
42. See Gimello, Cheng Kuan on the Hua-yen Trinity,
404, n. 67. Although no extant copies of the Sutra of the
Thousand-armed Manjusr exist among the Dunhuang
manuscripts, a fragment of Hyechos travelogue to India
and over the Silk Road, which began in the 720s, is pre-
served in the Dunhuang corpus. The English translation
was published as Han-Sung Yang et al., trans. and ed.,
The Hye-Cho Diary: Memoir of the Pilgrimage to the
Five Regions of India (Berkeley, CA: Asian Humanities
Press; Seoul: Po Chin Chai, Ltd., 1984). Supporting Robert
Gimellos assertion regarding the presence of the sutra at
Mt. Wutai are the two Ming dynasty sculptures from the
region, both of which adhere more closely to the sutra
than the mural paintings from the Mogao cave shrines,
particularly in the pairing of Manjusr with Samantabhadra.
The first of these is an early Ming dynasty (13681644)
sculpture of the Thousand-armed Manjusr that appears
in the Great Compassion Hall of Chongshansi
in Taiyuan , Shanxi. Stretching 8.3 meters in
height, this sculpture was crafted from gilded wood and
clay and serves as an attendant flanking the right side of
a sculpture of an Eleven-headed and Thousand-armed
Avalokitesvara that is flanked on the left by a sculpture of
Samantabhadra. See Angela Falco Howard et al., Chinese
Sculpture (New Haven: Yale University Press; Beijing:
Foreign Languages Press, 2006), 423, and Zhang Jizhong
, Taiyuan Chongshansi wenwu tulu T1066, T1067, and T1068.
(An illustrated catalogue of cultural relics in Chong-
shansi, Taiyuan) (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe,
1987), 3435. The second, more recent, example is an un-
usual bronze sculpture of the Thousand-armed Manjusr
with eleven heads dating to the Ming dynasty (1609) in
 The Thousand-armed Manjusr at Dunhuang 103
Xiantong Si , the largest monastery on Mt. Wutai
in Shanxi Province. Seated atop a lionthe mount of
Manjusrthis sculptural figure of Thousand-armed Man-
jusr appears as the central figure of a triad flanked on
either side by a conventional Manjusr and Samantabhadra.
The iconography of this sculpture evokes elements of the
Thousand-armed and Eleven-headed forms of Avalokites-
vara: in addition to the eleven heads of the sculpture, two
arms reach upward holding a small Buddha, suggestive
of the iconography of Avalokitesvara. See Himalayan
Art Resource, http://www.himalayanart.org/search/set.
cfm?setid=2624 (accessed January 9, 2016).
The incorporation of characteristics of both deities is
noted in Sun, Wenshu pusa tuxiangxue yanjiu, 34.
43. In Cave 288, a Tang dynasty painting of the
Thousand-armed Manjusr appears on the north wall
of the antechamber; the painting on the south wall of the
antechamber is not recorded; see Dunhuang wenwu yan-
jiusuo, Dunhuang Mogaoku neirong zonglu, 103.
44. Wu, What is Bianxiang?, 14649.
45. Ibid., 16066.
46. See Ikumi Kaminishi, Etoki, or Deciphering Pic-
tures, of Buddhist Propaganda, Word & Image: A Journal
of Verbal/Visual Enquiry 18, no. 2 (2002): 192209, esp.
2034.
47. Watson, The Vimalakirti Sutra, 6465.
48. Sr Devi is a female deity of beauty and prosperity,
identified with Laksm in India and later in Japan as
Kichijoten. In Hindu mythology, she is the wife of Visnu;
in Buddhist sources, she is the wife of Vaisravana. Rs i
Vasu is an Indian sage commonly depicted as a white-
haired ascetic holding a text.
49. Their incorporation can be seen in images from
Central Asia. See D. C. Bhattacharyya, Icons of Cultural
Linkage, in Across the Himalayan Gap: An Indian Quest
for Understanding China, ed. Tan Chung (New Delhi:
Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, 1998), 199.
50. Kevin Gray Carr, Plotting the Prince: Shotoku
Cults and the Mapping of Medieval Japanese Buddhism
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2012), 80, 82. See
also Kaminishi, Etoki, or Deciphering Pictures, 194.
51. Carr, Plotting the Prince, 26.
52. Ibid., 8485.
53. T279:319a68. For an English translation, see
Cleary, The Flower Ornament Scripture, 1135.
54. T1177A:772c20.
55. I surveyed the following texts concerning the
Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara from the Sino-Japanese
Buddhist canon: T1056, T1057A, 1057B, T1058, T1059,
T1060, T1061, T1062A, T1062B, T1063, T1064, T1065,
56. T1060:106a17. This translation is better known
in China than the one by Zhitong (T1057A). See
Chun-fang Yu, Kuan-yin: The Chinese Transformation of
Avalokitesvara (New York: Columbia University Press,
2001), 59.
104 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART
57. T1067:131c27.
58. Avalokitesvaras popularity was reflected in repre-
sentations of the Western Pure Land and Amitabha triads
dating from the fifth century onward; in such images,
he was paired with Mahasthamaprapta as one of the
two attendants of Amitabha Buddha. See Yu, Kuan-yin,
35.
59. T475:537b13. Manjusr also appears in this as-
sembly, T475:537b16. For the English translation, see
Watson, The Vimalakirti Sutra, 19.
60. T262:2b1723. For the English translation, see
Burton Watson, trans., The Lotus Sutra (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1993), 322.
61. Watson, The Lotus Sutra, 4.
62. See Eugene Y. Wang, Shaping the Lotus Sutra:
Buddhist Visual Culture in Medieval China (Seattle and
London: University of Washington Press, 2005), 346.
The impact of this image is reinforced by Willa Jane Tanabe,
who writes that unlike other images that illustrate the narra-
tive of the Lotus Sutra, the paired Buddhas were symbolic
or emblematic of the scripture as a whole. See Willa Jane
Tanabe, Art of the Lotus Sutra, in Readings of the Lotus
Sutra, ed. Stephen F. Teiser and Jacqueline I. Stone (New
York: Columbia University Press), 15185, esp. 180.
63. T262:57a22b19. For an English translation, see
Watson, The Lotus Sutra, 3012.
64. In Japan, for example, a set of six Kannon (Avalo-
kitesvara) developed, pertaining to the six realms of rebirth
in Buddhism. See Sherry Fowler, Six and Thirty-three:
Manifestations of Kannon in Japan (Zwischen sechs
und dreiunddreissig: Erscheinungsformen von Kannon
Bosatsu), in Kannon, Divine Compassion: Early Buddhist
Art from Japan (Kannon Gottliches Mitgefuhl Fruhe
buddhistische Kunst aus Japan) (Zurich: Museum Rietberg,
2007), 5979. Another transformation was that of Avalo-
kitesvara into feminized forms, beginning in the Song
dynasty (9601279) and postdating the initial pairing of
the Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara and Manjusr.
65. Dunhuang wenwu yanjiusuo, Dunhuang Mogaoku
neirong zonglu, 32.
66. Ibid., 1819.
67. Watson, The Lotus Sutra, 3012.
68. See T14.463:481a28-b10 and Robert M. Gimello,
Chang Shang-ying on Wu-tai Shan, 100.
69. T1060:107a.728.
70. See Cartelli, The Five-Colored Clouds of Mount
Wutai, 2, for a discussion of the nirmanakaya concept
exhibited in the corpus of Mt. Wutai poems from Dun-
huang, celebrating the transformations and manifestations
of Manjusr as he appeared in the form most suited to the
needs of devotees, depicted in mural painting of Mt. Wutai
on the west wall of Mogao Cave 61. The transformations
of Manjusr were an important theme in the Manjusr
Parinivana Sutra, with a revised date of the late fourth
fifth century, which described the ability of Manjusr to
manifest himself in innumerable forms in the ten direc-
tions, as well as the promise of rebirth in a pure land and
Manjusrs ability to save those who hear, recite, or read
his name, or who see his image. The Manjusr Parinirvana
Sutra is translated in its entirety in Quinter, Visualizing
the Manjusr Parinirvana Sutra, 10514.
71. Cartelli, The Five-Colored Clouds of Mount Wu-
tai, 2.
72. Ibid., 65, 6869, 78. It was believed that Manjusr
appeared as five-colored clouds to pilgrims with less
karmic affinity than those who were able to see him in his
true form, seated atop his lion mount. Ibid., 116.
73. Another account regarding Manjusrs ability to
appear in different forms is in the preface to the Sutra
of the Revered and Victorious Dharan of the Buddhas
Usnsa (Foding zunsheng tuoluoni jing ),
composed in or just after 689, which relates the
likely
spurious legend of Buddhapalitas (Fotuoboli , fl.
late 7th c.) procurement of the original text from India.
Having arrived in China in 677 in order to make a pil-
grimage to Mt. Wutai, Buddhapalita met Manjusr in the
guise of an old man who inquired as to whether he had
brought to China a copy of the dharan sutra. See Jinhua
Chen, Sarra and Scepter: Empress Wus Political Use of
Buddhist Relics, Journal of the International Association
of Buddhist Studies 25, no. 12 (2002): 33150, esp. 106.
See also T967:349b4c5. Manjusr also appeared as an
old man to the monk pilgrim Wuzhuo , who visited
Mt. Wutai in the year 767. The appearance of the bodhi-
sattva as an old man may suggest that Manjusr had simi-
lar qualities to a Daoist sage. See Cartelli, The Five-
Colored Clouds of Mount Wutai, 115.
74. See Dorothy Wong, A Reassessment of the
Representation of Mt. Wutai from Dunhuang Cave 61,
Archives of Asian Art 46 (1993): 2752, and Ernesta
Marchand, The Panorama of Wutaishan as an Example
of Tenth Century Cartography, Oriental Art 22, no. 2
(1976): 15873. Interestingly, Avalokitesvara appears as
the leader of a heavenly assembly in the Mogao Cave 61
painting, though not paired with Manjusr . I am grateful
to Mary Anne Cartelli for sharing this information. Other
mural paintings of Mt. Wutai at Dunhuang appear in
Mogao Caves 9, 144, 159, 222, 237, and 361, for a total
of seven paintings altogether. See Dunhuang wenwu yan-
jiusuo, Dunhuang Mogaoku neirong zonglu, 22425.
75. Dunhuang wenwu yanjiusuo, Dunhuang Mogaoku
neirong zonglu, 22425.
76. Lin, Building a Sacred Mountain, 16472.
77. Ibid., 9698. True presence images of Manjusr
and other deities are the focus of Sun-ah Choi, Quest
for the True Visage: Sacred Images in Medieval Chinese
Buddhist Art and Concept of Zhen, Ph.D. diss., Univer-
sity of Chicago, 2012.
78. Dorothy Wong, A Reassessment of the Represen-
tation of Mt. Wutai from Dunhuang Cave 61, 32. The
Dasabhumika Sutra (Foshuo dousha jing ,
T280) is known by the second-century translation of
 MICHELLE C. WANG
Lokaksema (Zhiloujiachen ) and was later incor-
porated into the Avatamsaka Sutra.
notes that evidence for the influ-
79. Lu Jianfu briefly
ence (yingxiang ) of the Thousand-armed Avalokites-
vara on the Thousand-armed Manjusr can be found in the
thousand hands of the latter. See Lu, Qianbo Wenshu,
8. Regarding the thousand arms, it is worth noting that
the description of the Thousand-armed Manjusrs genera-
tion of a thousand Sakyamuni Buddhas from begging
bowls in the Sutra of the Thousand-armed Manjusr
closely matches the description of Vairocana Buddha in
the Lotus Treasury Realm from the Brahmas Net Sutra
(T1484.997c6c14). In this sutra, the thousand lotus
 The Thousand-armed Manjusr at Dunhuang 105
petals surrounding Vairocana each contain an emanation
of Vairocana in the form of Sakyamuni. Each of the thou-
sand worlds in turn further contains ten billion worlds, in
each of which Sakyamuni preaches the Brahmas Net
Sutra. Therefore, the influence from the Thousand-
armed Avalokitesvara may be overstated. Sun Xiaogang
states that the imagery of the Thousand-armed Avalokites-
vara blended with that of the Thousand-armed Manjusr
until the distinctive characteristics of the latter disap-
peared as a result of the sinicization and popularization
of Buddhism and influence from the cult of Avalokites-
vara. See Sun, Wenshu pusa, 3334.