s does not seem to me strong,[38]
though _a priori_ I see no reason for doubting their existence. In
1102 a Chinese monk named P'u-ming published a romantic legend of
Kuan-yin's earthly life which helped to popularize her worship. In
this and many other cases the later developments of Buddhism are due
to Chinese fancy and have no connection with Indian tradition.

Tara is a goddess of north India, Nepal and the Lamaist Church and
almost unknown in China and Japan. Her name means she who causes to
cross, that is who saves, life and its troubles being by a common
metaphor described as a sea. Tara also means a star and in Puranic
mythology is the name given to the mother of Buddha, the planet
Mercury. Whether the name was first used by Buddhists or Brahmans is
unknown, but after the seventh century there was a decided tendency to
give Tara the epithets bestowed on the Saktis of Siva and assimilate
her to those goddesses. Thus in the list of her 108 names[39] she is
described among other more amiable attributes as terrible, furious,
the slayer of evil beings, the destroyer, and Kali: also as carrying
skulls and being the mother of the Vedas. Here we have if not the
borrowing by Buddhists of a Saiva deity, at least the grafting of
Saiva conceptions on a Bodhisattva.

The second great Bodhisattva Manjusri[40] has other similar names,
such as Manjunatha and Manjughosha, the word Manju meaning sweet or
pleasant. He is also Vagisvara, the Lord of Speech, and Kumarabhuta,
the Prince, which possibly implies that he is the Buddha's eldest son,
charged with the government under his direction. He has much the same
literary history as Avalokita, not being mentioned in the Pali Canon
nor in the earlier Sanskrit works such as the Lalita-vistara and
Divyavadana. But his name occurs in the Sukhavati-vyuha: he is the
principal interlocutor in the Lankavatara sutra and is extolled in the
Ratna-karandaka-vyuha-sutra.[41] In the greater part of the Lotus he
is the principal Bodhisattva and instructs Maitreya, because, though
his youth is eternal, he has known many Buddhas through innumerable
ages. The Lotus[42] also recounts how he visited the depths of the sea
and converted the inhabitants thereof and how the Lord taught him what
are the duties of a Bodhisattva after the Buddha has entered finally
into Nirvana. As a rule he has no consort and appears as a male
Athene, all intellect and chastity, but sometimes Lakshmi or Sarasvati
or both a