Page 90 - Popular Deities of Chinese Buddhism (Illustrated) and Symbols

appeared in the form of a great tiger, dispersed the crowd, and

carried the inaniminate body into the forest.

Miao Shan’s spirit descended into hell, but her sweetness and

the purity of her prayers soon converted it from a place of great

suffering to a paradise. is alarmed the Registrar of the Liv-

ing and the Dead who then hastily petitioned Yen Lo, the King

of the Underworld, to order her removal declaring, ‘Since it has

been decreed that, in justice, there must be a heaven and a hell,

if Princess Miao Shan’s soul is not sent back to the upper world,

there will be no hell left, but only a heaven’.

Her soul was then quickly transported back to her body which

was lying under a pine tree. Upon returning to life, Buddha

Amitabha appeared, and directed the princess to continue her

practice of the perfections in a cave called Hsuan Ai, in the

island of Pu-to.

For nine years she devoted herself to performing acts of merits

and meditational practices and attained Buddhahood. It was in

Pu-to Island that she acquired her two acolytes Hoan Shen-tsai

and Lung-nu, better known to all as Golden Youth and Jade

Maiden.

In the meantime, King Miao Chung, who had displeasured the

Jade Emperor, Supreme Ruler of Heaven, by his heinous crimes

of burning a nunnery which nearly caused the loss of so many

lives and the killing of so virtuous a maiden as Miao Shan, that

he received the punishment of an incurable disease, the only

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