The circumstances in which Avalokita became a goddess are obscure.  The Indian images of him are not feminine, although his sex is hardly noticed before the tantric period.  He is not a male deity like Krishna, but a strong, bright spirit and like the Christian archangels above sexual distinctions.  No female form of him is reported from Tibet and this confirms the idea that none was known in India,[36] and that the change was made in China.  It was probably facilitated by the worship of Tara and of Hariti, an ogress who was converted by the Buddha and is frequently represented in her regenerate state caressing a child.  She is mentioned by Hsuean Chuang and by I-Ching who adds that her image was already known in China.  The Chinese also worshipped a native goddess called T’ien-hou or T’ou-mu.  Kuan-yin was also identified with an ancient Chinese heroine called Miao-shen.[37] This is parallel to the legend of Ti-tsang (Kshitigarbha) who, though a male Bodhisattva, was a virtuous maiden in two of his previous existences.  Evidently Chinese religious sentiment required a Madonna and it is not unnatural if the god of mercy, who was reputed to assume many shapes and to give sons to the childless, came to be thought of chiefly in a feminine form.  The artists of the T’ang dynasty usually represented Avalokita as a youth with a slight moustache and the evidence as to early female figures 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.