At Jehol, about a hundred and twenty miles north-east of Peking, there is a nest of lama monasteries, in a valley close to the emperor's hunting-lodge and summer palace. Among these monasteries are some of Thibetan architecture, the chief of which is Potala. It is modelled after the Potala in which the Dalai Lama lives at Lhassa in Thibet. The Dalai Lama is a living incarnation of Kwan-yin, and therefore his palace-temple was called Potala. This name is applied variously to a sea-port at the mouth of the Indus, the seat of Shakyamuni's ancestors, and to a mountain range near or part of the Nilgherries where Avalokiteshwara was fond of going, in addition to the island in the Indian Ocean, the palace at Lhassa, and the Chinese P'u-to. For particulars, see in Eitel, p. 93.

Perhaps the island may have been at the mouth of the

[paragraph continues] Indus, and left its name in the present Tatta, the Pattala of the Greeks.

The setting apart of the island P'u-to, in the Chusan Archipelago, is proof that the Buddhist imagination, in selecting a place for the special worship of Kwan-yin in China, preferred an island. This agreed best with the legends.

Here Kwan-yin would, in expounding the dharma that is to save living beings, seem more in her place than on a mountain of the main-land. This is an appropriate tau-c'hang for her, where she can be at hand to rescue sailors from the dangers of the sea, and where crowds of pilgrims will in fair weather not be wanting to receive the benefit of her instructions.

Footnotes

^267:1 Tau-c'hang, "Place of doctrine."