Note 65 — Chapter VII
Reading edition
Manjusri (文殊師利) is a Bodhisattva who in China is practically worshipped as the God of Wisdom. Like Ti Tsang, Kuan Yin and others, he is supposed to have had a human prototype, or rather to have been incarnated in the body of a historical personage. But the truth probably is that any person of superlative wisdom was liable to be identified by his admirers with Manjusri. There is an interesting reference to him in I-Tsing's Records of the Buddhist Religion, translated by J. Takakusu (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896), p. 169. The translator comments on the fact that Manjusri was even by the people of India supposed, at one time, to be somehow connected with China, and the actual place of his residence was identified as Ping Chou in Chih-li.