The Monk who was a Woman: Quan Am Thi Kinh and the Domestication of Buddhism in Vietnam

• In Event: 192. Religious Spaces, Identities, and Transformations in Southeast Asia

Abstract

This study examines the Vietnamese folk Buddhist tale of “Quan Am Thi Kinh,” an indigenous "apocryphal" account of how the goddess Avalokitesvara (Ch. Guanyin, Vn. Quan Am) became the Bodhisattva "Bestower of Sons". I focus on this central question, how did the identity of Quan Am "Bestower of Sons" get transmitted from China to be domesticated in Vietnam? I argue that the domestication of this identity of Quan Am is best understood within the context of the larger, complex cultural discourses of sexual morality and reproduction in premodern Vietnam. Thus, I examine "miracle tales" (truyen ky) about martyred chaste women and licentious ghosts written in classical Chinese and vernacular Nom, Vietnamese Buddhist stele inscriptions, and "morality books" (thien thu) from popular Vietnamese religious culture. I show how the cult of Quan Am "Bestower of Sons" used the discourse of karmic merit to transform the Confucian logic of sexual reproduction into the logic of reproduction through (karmic) recompense. Finally, I also argue that the enduring and wide popularity of the Thi Kinh story, as seen in folk opera, for example, derives from the tale's resonance with larger cultural trends found in popular poetry and tales concerned with tragic love and martyred women. Thus, the figure of Thi Kinh became domesticated, not so much as a fertility figure, but more as a potent symbol for those on the margins who must bear injustice and cruel fate, who sometimes can triumph if only through death, transformation, and martyrdom.

Author

• Cuong Mai, Appalachian State University