. central divinities 99
Color plate 2. Hayagrīva-Avalokiteśvara. Mt. Baoding, Dazu, Sichuan, thirteenth
century. Photo by author.
pertaining to her cult were translated during the Northern Song, Tārā
did not become truly important until the Yuan dynasty with the intro-
duction of Tibetan Buddhism. At that time her cult was highly popular
and widespread, especially in Northern China.
Cundī is a female, many-armed martial divinity who may have
originated in India as an off-shoot of Tāra in the sixth–seventh cen-
turies.^27 Although her cult—or more correctly, her spell—was intro-
duced to China in the late seventh century, the majority of the primary
scriptures, including many ritual texts, were translated and/or written
(^27) Cf. Shaw 2006, 265–275.