Two Precious Scroll Narratives of Guanyin and Her ... - Khamkoo

2 Introduction
twelfth century. As the legend was taken up in various genres of literature,
from formal biographies to plays and novels, it adapted itself
to the changing demands of place and time. 3 The most popular
version of the legend of the miraculous life of the saintly Princess
Miaoshan, however, was a version titled The Precious Scroll of Incense
Mountain (Xiangshan baojuan). Intended for performance,
the story in this version is told in an alternation of prose and verse.
While the earliest external reference to this text dates only from the
early sixteenth century, and its earliest preserved printing only
to 1773, its history may perhaps be traced back as far as the twelfth
century. 4 The text circulated both in a more elaborate version and
in a later, shorter version. This monograph offers an annotated
translation of The Precious Scroll of Incense Mountain based on
this later, shorter version of the text, which circulated widely
among Guanyin’s devotees in the second part of the nineteenth and
the first half of the twentieth century and is known through many
printings. The Precious Scroll of Incense Mountain is both an important
document in the history of Chinese popular Buddhism that
provides important insights into images of the religious experience
of women and also a powerful and moving work of literature that
merits wider exposure.
On the frontispiece of the 1773 edition of The Precious Scroll of
Incense Mountain, however, Guanyin is not portrayed as Princess
Miaoshan. While her legend was the most popular tale explaining
Guanyin’s female nature, Miaoshan as such did not become an important
subject in Buddhist religious art. 5 The female Guanyin was
more widely venerated in the forms of the White-robed Guanyin or
the Guanyin of the Southern Sea, and in later popular iconography
these images became fused. Accordingly, the frontispiece depicts a
White-robed Guanyin, seated on Potalaka Rock. She is placed in
front of a bamboo grove, which is depicted in the upper right-hand
corner. Above her, to the left, flies her white parrot, while Good-in-
Talent (Shancai, Sudhana) and Dragon Girl (Longnü, Nāgakanyā)
are shown in the lower left and right corners respectively. 6 The
story of how the bodhisattva Guanyin acquired these three disciples
is narrated in the second text translated here, The Precious Scroll of
Good-in-Talent and Dragon Girl (Shancai longnü baojuan), a relatively
short prosimetric text that may date from the eighteenth or
nineteenth century.
The Precious Scroll of Incense Mountain is very much con-