Images of Guanyin(Avalokitesvara) with her head covered sitting in the dhyana posture(i.e. seated in meditation) first appeared in the late Northern Song dynasty when Zen Buddhism entered a period of rapid development. This image was originally derived from monks sitting in meditation and was given the meaning of dhyana(sitting meditation) and prajna(wisdom), the theme gained popularity in the Northern and Southern Song dynasties and soon spread into the region south of the Yangtze River, though by the time of the Southern Song dynasty, the figure of Guanyin began to be attributed various decorations like the coronets and jade necklaces. When the spread of these images reached Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Sichuan, and Chongqing where Zen Buddhism was already well developed, it was taken up by local folk artists and disseminated even further into the popular culture of the time. In the Ming and Qing dynasty, this type of Guanyin image gained in diversity but came to be characterized mainly by the positioning of the two hands in dhyana-mudra and the separation of the cloak and garments. Over the course of its development through history, the theme of Guanyin sitting in meditation gradually combined with those of the Water-and-Moon Guanyin and Purple-Bamboo Guanyin as well as the sixteen arhats, largely as a result of the influence of the Guanyin belief from Potalaka Mountain in southern India.
