The salvation of mankind by teaching is a conception very characteristic of Chinese Buddhism. This belongs to all those fancied personages called Fo and P'u-sa. For example, the mission of Kwan-yin is the salvation of men. It is symbolised by her thirty-two metamorphoses. In these shapes she enters various kingdoms as a saviour. Among these representations are seen the eighty-four thousand arms and hands with which she guides the ignorant and the lost. The doctrines taught by Kwan-yin are the non-existence of matter, and the infiniteness of the knowledge and mercy of Buddha. All evils are summed up in ignorance. To acquire knowledge of the emptiness of existing things is to become saved. It is this that is meant by the salvation of men through the agency of the goddess of mercy. In accordance with a vow she assumes some one of her thirty-two shapes, and proceeds to the various kingdoms of the world to convert men, and to the regions where gods, giants, demons, and fairies reside, to protect, instruct, and save all. Kings, governors, and

people are renovated by the power of mercy. They are said to lose their fear, to be extricated from the thrall of delusion, to become perfect, and to have the power of aiding themselves or others. Kwan-yin is represented as being able, by uttering charms, to assume numberless shapes for the sake of saving. She saves by mercy, by wisdom, by entering into a state. She obtains the great self-reliant power by which she can ensure that those who pray for sons and those who pray for the state of samadhi shall attain it, and those who pray for deliverance from dangers, or for old age, shall also secure them. She is able to give Nirvana to her petitioners by the same power. This is said to be her great mercy and pity. All the Buddhas and Bodhisattwas have powers analogous to these. But none are so prominent, perhaps, in this respect, as Kwan-yin. Manjusiri (Wen-shu), whose seat of worship is Wu-t'ai shan in Shan-si, is, even in North China, where his worship most prevails, much less thought of than Kwan-yin. Probably P'u-hien, the seat of whose worship is Wo-mei shan, in the province of Si-ch'wen, is even less esteemed than Manjusiri, and a fortiori than Kwan-yin. It would seem, then, to be a fact important in modern Buddhist history, that the most popular of the divinities of this religion should be presented first with male and afterwards with female attributes, and that the change of sex in the images should have been accomplished within the last few centuries.