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4    AMERICAN-ANDERSON NEWS   March

Kuan Yin

THE Madonna of the Buddhist faith is the goddess Kuan Yin.  Other gods are feared, but Kuan Yin.  Other gods are feared, but Kuan Yin is loved, being gracious and kind, protector in sorrow and giver of children.  Every temple in china has a shrine to Kuan Yin the Merciful, whose name means "one who hears the cry of the world."  There is a legend that she paused on the glorious threshold of Heaven to heed a cry of anguish which rose from the earth.  She is as well the paragon of Chinese beauty, and the lovely statuettes of Kuan Yin in a jade and porcelain explain why to say that a woman resembles the goddess is to pay the highest praise to her grace and comeliness.

SOMEHOW Kuan Yin has been indentified with the princess Miao Shu, who refused to marry, thereby incurring the wrath of her father, who had her beheaded.  The story goes that her spirit descended to the nether regions, but when at her approach that kingdom of tormented souls became a flowering paradise it was deemed necessary to send her back to earth.  Here she found her body beneath a pine tree.  She went to P'u T'o island and there in nine years achieved full perfection and was admitted to Buddhahood by the Lord of Heaven.

P'u T'o is a rocky island of the Chusan group and one of the most prosperous of the Buddhist sacred places in China.  There is another legend which explains why the island is sacred to Kuan Yin.  It concerns a Japanese priest, who while visiting in China acquired a precious image of Kuan Yin.  He set out to take his treasure to Japan and while sailing in his junk through the Chusan islands, his progress was arrested by a miraculous growth of water lilies covering the sea for miles around.  Attributing this phenomenon to the supernatural powers of the sacred ^[[hand drawn corner]]image, he made no opposition and vowed that 
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Notes on March Sales
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ViƩ, Schlichtig, and Schmitz.  Mortlake tapestries, of that short-lived industry mentioned in the January issue of this bulletin, lend individuality to the tapestry group.

THE sale brought by Mr. J. Gazdar of Bombay, India, is the first of Eastern Art we have held this season.  This very fine collection includes Indian bronzes and stone sculptures;  Persian and Arabian illuminated manuscripts, in single leaves and bound volumes;and Persian and Indian XVII century rugs.

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Red Corundum
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at Mogok.  This is also the British administrative headquarters, situated in a valley four thousand feet above sea level, where the annual rainfall reaches the forbidding level of ninety-eight inches.

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Love in Indian Art
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tion of a lady at her toilet, wringing water from her hair.  In this favorite theme of the Rajput painters the heroine is likely to be represented near a river, and the drops falling from her hair are often compared to a shower of pearls.

EVERY Indian artist has made his obeisance to the power of mysticism and contemplation in the human mind, but none has been blind to the divine aspiration in that mind which has let it to feel a kinship even with its gods.

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since she appeared unwilling to go with him to his country, he would go wherever she desired.  Whereupon a path opened and the junk was propelled by a strange force to P'u T'o.  There he built a shrine for her and there are now about one thousand resident monks on the sacred island.