Gender Recognition Of Avalokitesvara In China Based On Vggnet

Abstract Many people are confused with Avalokitesvara’s ambiguous gender. Can we use computer vision to help us recognize it objectively and efficiently? In this paper, VGGNet is applied to propose an automatic gender recognition system. To validate the efficiency of the proposed method, abundant experiments are implemented on Buddhist images of Dazu Rock Carvings, Mogao Caves, and Yungang Grottoes. The experimental results demonstrate its efficiency. Firstly, it is effectively applied to gender recognition on both non-Buddhist and Buddhist images. Compared with five classical feature extraction methods, the VGG-based system performs not much better on non-Buddhist image recognition, but superior on Buddhist image recognition. Furthermore, the experiments are also carried out on three different training datasets, real-world facial datasets as CUHK, IMFDB and CAS-PEAL. The unsatisfactory results based on IMFDB indicate that it is not valid for Indian facial images applied as a training set in gender recognition on Buddhist image in China. With the sinicization of Buddhism, there were more Chinese rather than Indian characteristics for Buddhist image in China. The results based on CAS-PEAL are more robust than those based on CUHK, as the former is mainly composed of adult facial images, and the latter consists of student facial images. It gives the evidence that Buddha and Bodhisattva (Avalokitesvara included) were adult image in Buddhist art. The last but the most meaningful is that besides the time factor, the geographical impact should not be ignored when we talk about the gender transformation of Avalokitesvara in China. The gender of Avalokitesvara frescoes in Mogao Caves drawn in the Sui, Tang, Five, Song and Yuan dynasties were always with prominent male characteristics (tadpole-like moustache), while bodhisattvas in Yungang Grottoes engraved in the Northern Wei Dynasty were feminine even though they were made earlier than those in Mogao Caves. It is quite different from the common idea that the feminization of Avalokitesvara occurred in the early Tang Dynasties and completely feminized in the late Tang Dynasty. Both the quantitative results and image analysis indicate that it is quite a complicated issue for the feminization of Avalokitesvara in China.