Place · island temple · Japan
Hōgon-ji, Chikubushima
The Benzaiten temple on the island in Lake Biwa, founded in 724 and one of the three great Benzaiten sites of Japan with Enoshima and Itsukushima. Benzaiten is Sarasvatī, arrived through Chinese translation of the Golden Light Sutra rather than through any Hindu mission, and she kept the water: all three of her principal Japanese shrines stand on islands.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 35.421, 136.143
Worth knowing
The Indian goddess of a river became, in Japan, a goddess of islands. Sarasvatī was the river itself; Benzaiten is approached across water, and the boat to Chikubushima is part of the visit. Her Japanese iconography kept the stringed instrument — the vīṇā became the biwa, which is also the name of the lake.
Connections (2)
- In the same set asEnoshima
Two of the three great Benzaiten of Japan, with Itsukushima the third. Both are islands, which is the part of Sarasvatī that survived the journey: she was a river in India, and in Japan she is reached across water everywhere she is important. Chikubushima sits in Lake Biwa and Enoshima off the Shonan coast, and the pilgrimage that joins the three is still walked.
- In the same set asItsukushima Shrine, Miyajima
Itsukushima in the Inland Sea and Chikubushima in Lake Biwa, six hundred kilometres apart and joined only by the goddess. The three-site circuit is late medieval and devotional rather than doctrinal: nobody decided that Sarasvatī should be worshipped on islands, and by the time anybody noticed the pattern it was already the rule.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Hōgon-ji”, “Benzaiten” and “Chikubu Island”. Catherine Ludvik, Sarasvatī, Riverine Goddess of Knowledge (2007).
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