馬郎婦

Etymology
Literally, “Wife of Mr. Ma”.

The story of Malang-fu is found in several Chinese miracle-tale collections. According to the version in the 13th-century  (Chronicle of the Buddhas and Patriarchs), the gist of the story is as follows:

In 809, there was a beautiful young woman in the eastern part of Shaanxi, an area not yet adhering to the Buddhist faith. Courted by numerous young men, she insisted that she would only marry one who could memorise the “Universal Gateway” chapter of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra in one night. The next morning, twenty-odd men succeeded, so she then asked them to memorise the Vajracchedikāprajñāpāramitāsūtra in one night. Ten remained, and were subsequently asked to memorise the entire Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra in three days. Only a pious young man with the surname of Ma succeeded, and she became his wife.

However, during the wedding, the young woman fell ill and asked to be allowed to rest in another room. Before the wedding guests departed, she suddenly passed away. Her body instantly started to decay, so she was soon buried. Several days later, an old monk wearing a purple robe arrived at the burial place. After opening the casket, people discovered that the bones of her skeleton had been linked by a gold chain. The monk informed the villagers that the young woman was none other than the reincarnation of bodhisattva Guanyin, then the monk ascended into the sky and disappeared.

This version is different from ― and likely eventually based on ― an earlier version in the 8th/9th-century Xuxuan Guailu (, More Incredible Records of Oddities), which depicted the protagonist as a charming and promiscuous woman, likewise suddenly passing away at a young age and revealed by a foreign monk at the tomb to be the bodhisattva Guanyin in disguise.

Proper noun

 * 1)  Malangfu, one of the thirty-three manifestations of the bodhisattva Guanyin, in which it appears as “Mr. Ma's Wife”