Feminized While Domesticated: How Yü Chun-Fang Avoids Feminist Interpretive Biases in Her Study of Avalokiteśvara

Bodhisattva Guanyin, or Avalokiteśvara, has undergone a series of transformations and has become one of the most widely worshiped bodhisattvas in the history of Chinese Buddhism. Yü Chun-fang’s work, Kuan-Yin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokiteśvara, with a Chinese version out in 2012, has meticulously documented this process. This article reviews Yü’s seminal methodology, which has been adopted in her study of the imported deity’s feminization and domestication course, and analyses how she avoids the feminist interpretive biases that are common to the present-day Buddhology.