I've gotten involved in a comparative religion project. The members of the
group have come up with some very interesting cases in which a holy image
takes on wounds, etc. in place of a loyal devotee. For example, The Record
of Lineages of Buddhas and Patriarchs (C. Fozu tongji)tells of a man named
Sun Jingde who was guarding the northern frontier from 535 to 537. He
was a faithful devotee of Guanyin and kept a golden image of the bodhisattva,
to which he offered daily worship. He was wrongly imprisoned and sentenced to
death. After praying to Guanyin fervently one night, Sun dreamed of a monk who
promised to save him from death if Sun would chant a thousand recitations of
the sutra that the monk would dictate. But Sun only chanted it nine hundred
times when he was taken out of the prison to be executed. He managed to finish
the last one hundred recitations just as he arrived to the execution grounds.
When he was struck with the executioner's blade, he was miraculously unharmed,
but the blade broke in three pieces. Twice a new knife was produced, but the
same thing happened. When this was reported to the King, Gao Huan, he pardoned
Sun and promoted the sutra. When Sun looked at the statue of Guanyin, he saw
three impressions on its neck that looked as if they were made by a knife
(italics added).
This passage is taken from Chun-fang Yu, "Guanyin: the Chinese Transformation
of Avalokiteshvara," in Latter Days of the Law. Images of Chinese Buddhism
850-1850, ed. Marsha Weidner, Hawaii, 1994, p. 158.
Are there parallels in medieval Christianity to this case of miraculous
rescue with the added element of wound transference? I can remember a few
hagiographical cases in which the devotee of a saint sees a vision of the
saint bearing the wounds from which he or she saved the loyal follower, but
most of my research has been on a period too early for this sort of thing,
especially for holy images that suffer miraculous wounds. I'd appreciate
any examples of such occurrences or insights on this.
Phyllis
Phyllis G. Jestice
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