Place · monastic complex · Japan
Enryaku-ji, Mount Hiei
The Tendai headquarters above Kyoto, founded by Saichō in 788, and where Daikokuten took the form Japan knows. Daikokuten is Mahākāla, the black wrathful Shiva of the cremation grounds; on this mountain he became the three-faced Sanmen Daikokuten and then the smiling household god of the kitchen, with a mallet and a rice sack.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 35.071, 135.841
Worth knowing
It is the strangest of all these transformations. A god of destruction who haunts burning grounds in Ujjain is worshipped in the corner of a Japanese kitchen as a plump bringer of food, and the etymology is the whole journey: mahā-kāla, great black, read in Chinese as dà-hēi, read in Japanese as dai-koku.
Connections (2)
- TransmissionUjjain / Avantikā
Ujjain is Mahākāla’s city, where the god of the cremation grounds is the presiding deity and the ash of the dead is used in his worship. On Mount Hiei the same god became Sanmen Daikokuten and then the household deity of the kitchen, plump and smiling, with a mallet and a rice sack. The etymology is the whole journey: mahā-kāla, great black, to Chinese dà-hēi, to Japanese dai-koku.
- Alternative toMount Kōya
The two esoteric mountains, founded within thirty years of each other: Saichō’s Hiei above Kyoto for Tendai, Kūkai’s Kōya south of Osaka for Shingon. Both brought their doctrine from Tang China, both installed the Indian deities that came with it, and the rivalry between them shaped Japanese Buddhism for centuries — including which form of Mahākāla the country would end up worshipping.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Enryaku-ji”, “Daikokuten” and “Mahakala”. Bernard Faure, Gods of Medieval Japan (2015–16).
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