Chundi (Sanskrit: Cundi or Cunda; Chinese Zhunti; Japanese Juntei) is a many-armed female bodhisattva, revered above all in Chinese Buddhism as the "Mother of Seventy Million Buddhas". She is a dharani goddess, the embodiment of a sacred spell, and her short mantra is widely recited in Chinese Buddhism to this day.
How she is shown
- Eighteen arms in the form best known in China and Japan; the number is often linked to the eighteen special qualities of a Buddha. Indian and Tibetan ritual texts also describe four-armed and twenty-six-armed forms.
- Three eyes and a calm, gentle face. Her body is pale: white in Tibetan descriptions, yellowish in Chinese and Japanese ones.
- Her two main hands are usually held at her heart in a mudra, a symbolic gesture.
- Her other hands fan out around her, holding the tools of a bodhisattva: among them a sword, a rosary, an axe, a hook, a vajra, a banner, a lotus, a water pot, a noose, a wheel, a conch, a vase and a book of the Perfection of Wisdom.
- Seated on a lotus, sometimes with two dragon kings rising from the sea beneath her throne, a detail of Chinese and Japanese images. Some of our paintings show these two dragons below her.
Her history
Cundi became a popular goddess in north-eastern India under the Pala kings, from the 8th century. Her dharani reached China earlier and was translated three times in the late 7th and 8th centuries, by Divakara, Vajrabodhi and Amoghavajra; her practice flourished again in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, when lay Buddhists widely recited her mantra. In Japan she is Juntei Kannon: one Shingon tradition counts her among the six forms of Kannon (Avalokiteshvara), while others regard her as a Buddha. She is prayed to there for wisdom, harmony in marriage, children, long life and rain. In Tibetan Buddhism she is a minor goddess, known mainly from ritual collections that describe her peaceful, four-armed white form.
Like Namgyalma, she is known first through a dharani: in a sense, her image is the spell given a body.
Her mantra
The heart of her dharani is Om Cale Cule Cunde Svaha, usually preceded by a homage to the seventy million Buddhas.
In a painting
Eighteen arms around a seated figure are hard to arrange well. Look for arms that spread evenly, like the spokes of a wheel, from shoulders that still look natural; implements small enough to fit, yet clear enough to name; and hands with fine, relaxed fingers. Her face should be serene, with the third eye drawn delicately. To recognise her at a glance: a peaceful, many-armed goddess on a lotus, her main hands at her heart and the others fanned out in a circle, sometimes with dragons below. A many-armed goddess riding a lion or slaying a buffalo demon is the Hindu goddess Durga, not Chundi.
