Kyoto—Sanjusangendo

“Further to the south I visted a curious structure, the San-jiu-san-gen Do, a building nearly four hundred feet long, built in 1266, to receive a thousand images of the thousand-handed Kwannon, the godess of mercy. Peering through the barred doors (one is not allowed to enter), we see an army of images, each five feet high, arranged in ten tiers gradually sloping upwards. The central statue is much the largest and best, being eighteen feet high, but all are good specimens of wood carving.”




“From the palace we drove to the Sanjusangen-do, the temple of the thousand-armed godesss Kwan-non. The building is over 100 yards long, but narrow, and low in height. A veranda runs along the front, from which one looks though stout wooded bars upon the throng of guilt figures inside, the latter completely filling the temple. There are altogether 1000 figures of Kwan-non, each five feet high and supplied with 1000 hands and eleven faces, so the array of hands and faces is truly bewildering. They are ranged on a rising platform, one above another, in rows of ten deep. Kwan-non is the Buddhist goddess of mercy.”

Albert Tracy, Rambles Through Japan Without a Guide, (London, 1892) p. 177

Arthur H. Crow, Highways and Byeways in Japan, (London, 1883) pp. 58–59