Guanyin
c. 400 CE – 2026 CEattested
Mount Putuo
- Chinese
Bodhisattva who hears the cries of the world and delays her own enlightenment to answer them. Male in the earliest Chinese images and unambiguously female within a few centuries, one of the clearest cases of a deity changing sex in transmission.
Known for
- hearing the cries of the world
- enlightenment postponed
- a god who changed sex in transmission
Dates are estimates. A great deal of what this atlas covers is only datable to within a century.