Place · temple hall · Japan
Sanjūsangen-dō, Kyoto
A hall a hundred and twenty metres long holding a thousand and one Kannon figures, and in front of them the twenty-eight attendants — which is where the Indian pantheon stands in a row and can be counted. Bonten is Brahmā, Taishakuten is Indra, Karura is Garuḍa, Naraen Kengō is Nārāyaṇa, Basu Sennin is the sage Vasu. The carvings are thirteenth-century and signed.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 34.988, 135.772
Worth knowing
They are not symbols of Indian gods but the gods themselves, arrived by way of Chinese translation and kept as attendants rather than promoted: the Vedic chief of the gods stands in the front row of somebody else’s hall, holding a vajra, labelled Taishakuten, and nobody in Kyoto found this remarkable.
Connections (2)
- TransmissionTenjiku
Tenjiku was India as the source of the Law, one of the three countries in the Japanese Buddhist world-picture. Sanjūsangen-dō is where that picture has faces: the twenty-eight attendants standing before the thousand Kannon include Bonten, Taishakuten, Karura and Naraen Kengō — Brahmā, Indra, Garuḍa and Nārāyaṇa — so the country the doctrine came from is represented by its gods, in a row, carved in the thirteenth century.
- Site adjacencyTō-ji, Kyoto
Two Kyoto halls three kilometres apart, both of which arrange Indian deities in space rather than depicting them on a wall. Tō-ji’s twenty-one figures are a mandala the visitor walks into; Sanjūsangen-dō’s twenty-eight attendants stand in a line a hundred and twenty metres long. Between them they hold most of the Indian pantheon that reached Japan, and neither was built to make that point.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Sanjūsangen-dō”, “Twenty-Eight Attendants”, “Śakra (Buddhism)” and “Brahmā (Buddhism)”.
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