A white goddess with eighteen arms and a third eye, a five-word dharani, and a cult that travelled from Bengal to Beijing and Kyoto and changed shape at every stop.
Cundi is a Buddhist goddess known above all through her dharani, a short incantation, and through the title Mother of Seven Koṭis of Buddhas. Her Sanskrit name is Cundī or Cundā; in Chinese she is Zhunti, often Zhunti Fomu, "Buddha-Mother Zhunti"; in Japan she is Juntei or Juntei Kannon; in Tibetan her principal text calls her lha mo skul byed ma. She is peaceful, usually white in Tibetan painting, and in East Asia most often shown with eighteen arms and three eyes, seated on a lotus.
Cundi meaning: the name and the title
Nobody is quite sure what the name means. Wikipedia's survey of the scholarship records the forms Cundī, Cundā, Cundavajrī and Candrā, and notes that Benoytosh Bhattacharyya argued for Cundā. The Japanese reference work JAANUS, published by Columbia University, reports a Japanese reading of the name as "pure", with butsumo, "Buddha-mother", meaning the mother of the myriad buddhas and bodhisattvas.
The title is clearer. In Chinese it is Qijuzhi Fomu, in Japanese Shichigutei Butsumo: Mother of Seven Koṭis of Buddhas. A koṭi is ten million, so the title is often translated "Mother of Seventy Million Buddhas". It does not describe a family. It describes the dharani, which the texts say was spoken by an immense number of past buddhas.
The Cundi dharani
Cundi is, first of all, a voice. Himalayan Art Resources (HAR) calls her "a dharani goddess", the personification of an incantation, and records that her mantra first appears in the Karandavyuha Sutra, the text better known for introducing oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ. Her own principal text is The Incantation of the Goddess Cundā, in the Tibetan canon as Toh 613 and 989, in the Kriya class of tantra.
The dharani in its sutra form runs: namaḥ saptānāṃ samyaksaṃbuddha koṭīnāṃ tadyathā oṃ cale cule cunde svāhā, "homage to the seven koṭis of perfectly awakened buddhas: thus, oṃ cale cule cunde svāhā". The last line is the part people know. As Wikipedia notes, following Roberts, cale, cule and cunde read as vocatives of three related names, which is one argument for the form Cundā.
The texts make large promises for it. The Cundī Dhāraṇī Sūtra, in Wikipedia's summary, says that 800,000 recitations will wipe out even the gravest karma. We report that as what the sutra says. We make no claim that reciting it, or hanging an image of her, will do anything for anyone.
Cundi in India
Her worship is old in north India. Wikipedia lists her name in the Śikṣāsamuccaya, the Sādhanamālā and the Niṣpannayogāvalī, and records that she was popular under the Pala kings, whose founder Gopala I was, according to the Tibetan historian Tāranātha, her devotee. An eleventh-century manuscript of the Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines illustrates "Cundā of the Cundā temple of Paṭṭikerā", in what is now Bangladesh.
The Indian texts mostly describe a four-armed goddess. The Sādhanamālā gives her the gesture of giving, a book on a lotus and a bowl; HAR adds that all three of its Cundā entries are four-armed. JAANUS notes four- and six-armed images from the seventh and eighth centuries at Ellora in India and at Borobudur in Java.
Cundi in China: Zhunti
The dharani reached China in the Tang dynasty. Wikipedia names translations by Divākara in 685 and Vajrabodhi in 723, and a much longer version by Amoghavajra in the eighth century; JAANUS lists the sutras of Vajrabodhi and Amoghavajra as the main sources for her eighteen-armed form. Tradition also says Vajrabodhi performed a Cundī rite for the emperor Xuanzong during a drought.
Her real rise came later. Late in the Liao dynasty, around the end of the eleventh century, the monk Daoshen joined Cundī practice to Huayan thought, and the historian Robert Gimello, quoted on Wikipedia, concluded that she "came to be a, if not the, central focus of esoteric Buddhist practice in late traditional Chinese Buddhism". In the late Ming and early Qing, at least six manuals on her practice were written, and the great monks Yunqi Zhuhong, Hanshan Deqing and Ouyi Zhixu all engaged with it. A distinctive Chinese practice set a mirror on the altar as her mandala.
Recent scholarship complicates the story. In a 2024 article in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Tianyu Lei argues that the goddess Zhunti was in important ways "made in China" through Chinese translations, manuals and images, and finds "no evidence of continuity" in the cult between Liao times and the Ming and Qing. In his reading, the Zhunti of Ming and Qing devotion was largely a new making, not the end of one continuous line.
Cundi in Japan: Juntei Kannon
In Japan she is Juntei, and how she is classed depends on the school. JAANUS records that in the Ono branch of Shingon, associated with Daigo-ji, she is a bodhisattva, a form of Kannon, and one of the Six Kannon. In the Hirosawa branch of Shingon and in Tendai she is counted as a buddha instead. She appears with eighteen arms in the Womb Realm mandala.
JAANUS adds a warning for anyone trying to identify her in a museum: surviving images have "between two and 84 arms", so she can be hard to tell apart from Thousand-Armed Kannon and Fukūkenjaku Kannon.
Cundi in Tibet
In Tibet she is a quieter figure. HAR describes her as "a relatively unknown minor female deity", associated mainly with the lineage of the Indian master Abhayakaragupta. It lists three forms: four arms, eighteen arms and twenty-six arms, all "peaceful in appearance and generally white in colour". The twenty-six-armed form, with three faces, comes from the Rinjung Gyatsa, the collection of Tāranātha. HAR's eighteen-armed examples include a metal figure from India, HAR 9094.
Cundi iconography: how to recognise her
- Eighteen arms in the common East Asian form, spread around her like a wheel. Wikipedia notes the tradition that they stand for eighteen merits listed in an appendix to her sutra. Other forms have four, six, sixteen or twenty-six.
- Three eyes. JAANUS records that the Japanese texts give her three eyes.
- The central hands are usually joined or held at the heart in a teaching gesture.
- Implements. In the Chinese ritual texts the other hands hold, among other things, a sword, a rosary, an axe, a hook, a banner, a lotus, a water pot, a noose, a wheel, a conch and a vase. Lists vary between texts and paintings.
- Color. White in most Tibetan images, as HAR says. The Japanese texts, according to JAANUS, describe her as yellow.
- Below the lotus. JAANUS notes that two dragon kings may rise from the sea beneath her throne.
Cundi, Guanyin and the other many-armed figures
Because she has many arms and a calm face, Cundi is often confused with Avalokiteshvara in his thousand-armed form, and in Chinese and Japanese practice she is sometimes treated as a form of Guanyin or Kannon. The quickest checks are the number of arms, which for Cundi is most often exactly eighteen, the third eye, the hands joined at the heart, and the absence of an eleven-headed crown. She can also be confused with other goddesses, and we did exactly that: we first listed our thangka of her as Parnashavari, the forest goddess who wears leaves. That was our mistake, and it is corrected here.
Our Cundi thangka
Our Cundi thangka shows her in the eighteen-armed form. She is white, crowned, with a third eye, seated in the vajra posture on a great white and pink lotus. Her two central hands are joined at her heart. The others open in a full circle behind her and hold a sword, a victory banner, a lotus, a vase, a wheel, a rosary and an axe, among other implements. A round halo of gold and orange, ringed with gold beads, encloses her, and inside it the ground is deep blue patterned in silver. Below are water and blue rocks, peonies and fruit, with a flaming jewel at the top and offerings at the foot. The piece shown is framed in our Night Sky brocade.
Like all our thangkas, it is our own drawing, kept to traditional iconometric proportions and printed on heavy card. It is not hand-painted and not mineral pigment. Elderly lay Buddhists who practise at a temple finish it by hand there, setting glass crystals one by one and tracing the outlines in gold glitter, which is not gilding; each piece takes about two days. The frame is 55 by 71 centimetres around an image of 40.2 by 56.2 centimetres, with a silk brocade frame-within-a-frame, a wood frame and an acrylic front. Part of every order goes to that temple, so every thangka is also an offering.
Her neighbours are in the Tara and goddess thangkas, and the rest in the thangka collection. How a traditional thangka is painted is in What Is a Thangka?, and where to hang one in How to Hang a Thangka.
Cundi questions
Who is Cundi?
A peaceful Buddhist goddess known through her dharani and the title Mother of Seven Koṭis of Buddhas. She is Zhunti in China, Juntei in Japan, and a white dharani goddess in Tibetan collections.
What is the Cundi mantra?
The short form is oṃ cale cule cunde svāhā. The sutra form begins with homage to the seven koṭis of buddhas.
Why does Cundi have eighteen arms?
The eighteen-armed form follows the Chinese translations of her sutra by Vajrabodhi and Amoghavajra. Tradition reads the arms as eighteen merits listed in an appendix to her sutra.
Is Cundi the same as Guanyin?
Not in her texts, which treat her as a goddess in her own right. In some Japanese Shingon lineages she is counted among the Six Kannon, and in Chinese popular practice she is sometimes called Zhunti Guanyin.
Is Cundi a Tibetan deity?
Her texts are in the Tibetan canon and she appears in Tibetan painting, but HAR calls her a relatively minor figure there. Her great popularity came in China and Japan.
What is the difference between Cundi and Parnashavari?
Parnashavari, the forest goddess, is usually yellow, three-faced and six-armed, wearing a skirt of leaves. Cundi is usually white, one-faced and eighteen-armed in the East Asian form, with her central hands at her heart.
Eighteen hands, one gesture
Look at any eighteen-armed Cundi long enough and the eye stops counting implements. Sixteen hands are busy, holding out a sword, a wheel, a vase. Two are still, pressed together at her heart. That stillness is where the painting starts.
May your mind stay clear and bright.
Cundi Thangka · Tara & Goddess Thangkas · Thangka collection
More from the Journal: What Is a Thangka? · How to Hang a Thangka · White Tara
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