Images of Thousand-armed and Thousand-eyed Avalokiteśvara with Cintāmaṇicakra and Amoghapāśa as attendants: References to the chanting of the ‘Dabeixin Dhāraṇī’ 大悲心陀羅尼

Abstract

ABSTRACT Images of the Thousand-armed and Thousand-eyed Avalokiteśvara include the main deity with many kinds of attendant figures; known examples from the Tang-Song dynasties include the Dunhuang paintings and the Sichuan cliff carvings. Some paintings from the Dunhuang caves have inscriptions of the attendants’ names and their situations. This work focuses on the appearance of Cintāmaṇicakra and Amoghapāśa as the Thousand-armed Avalokiteśvara’s attendants. Chanting of the ‘dabeixin dhāraṇī’ 大悲心陀羅尼 is the most important practice in the belief of the Thousand-armed Avalokiteśvara. Some inscriptions tell us that the purpose of these attendants in the paintings was to join or help the Buddhist gathering, Dabeihui 大悲會 of the Thousand-armed Avalokiteśvara, with chanting the dabeixin dhāraṇī. Additionally, in the manuscripts of the dabeixin dhāraṇī, each dhāraṇī word was noted with the attendants’ name unrelated to the meaning of the dhāraṇī, and Cintāmaṇicakra and Amoghapāśa appeared in those names. This article explores the relationship between many attendants drawn in the paintings of Thousand-armed Avalokiteśvara and the dhāraṇī words used in the chant, and discusses the possibility that the Cintāmaṇicakra and Amoghapāśa were also part of the belief for the Thousand-armed Avalokiteśvara based on the chanting of the dabeixin dhāraṇī.