Becoming GuanyinThe goddess Guanyin began in India as the bodhisattva Avalokite&sacutevara, originally a male deity. He gradually became indigenized as a female deity in China over the span of nearly a millennium. By the Ming (13581644) and Qing (16441911) periods, Guanyin had become the most popular female deity in China. In Becoming Guanyin, Yuhang Li examines how lay Buddhist women in late imperial China forged a connection with the subject of their devotion,