Hindu Gods, Buddhist art

Years ago, when I visited Japan for the first time, we went to Kyoto and saw, among other things, the famous temple of Sanjusangendo, which features a long hallway with approximately 1,000 statues of Kannon Bodhisattva, with a central, larger statue in the middle. The statues were amazing, but on this blog, you can also see a photo of showing other statues in front of the Kannon ones. These intrigued me even more at the time than the Kannon statues themselves, because these extra guardian deities were often times Hindu gods!

Onmark Productions has a nice explanation of the Hindu gods that were absorbed into Buddhism as guardian deities or devas. For example, Indra, king of the gods becomes Taishakuten (帝釈天) in Japanese Buddhism, and Brahma the creator god becomes Bonten (梵天). Hinduism as we know it didn’t exist in India during the time of the Buddha, so it’s a common misconception that Buddhism descended from Hinduism. Instead, Buddhism was one of many religions in India that competed at the time, mainly with the earlier Vedic Religion, which dealt largely with interacting with the gods, as well as with Jainism.¹ Hinduism as we know it emerged centuries later when the Upanishads were written.

Interestingly, the gods that are most prominent in Buddhist texts are that Vedic gods that were dominant at the time, like Indra and Brahma, not Shiva and Vishnu who rise to prominence later. In the Buddhist texts, you often see that Indra protects the Buddha and lives as his disciple (albeit a supremely powerful one). So, naturally these gods were absorbed as Buddhist guardian deities in art, and in religion. In the later text, the Golden Light Sutra, three Hindu goddesses, Saraswati, Drdha the Earth Goddess², and Shri/Lakshmi the consort of Vishnu are frequently quoted as vowing to protect the Dharma.

Now, while Buddhism absorbs many of the old gods from India even as it travels to other parts of the world, the gods or devas still play only a minor role as protectors. You can see this in the example at Sanjusangendo as they are dwarved by the eminence of Kannon Bodhisattva, and also by the fact that being reborn as a god is still considered trapped in the cycle of rebirth, and subject to temptation, so human rebirths are treated as more ideal.

Interesting how features from one culture evolve and change in another one.

¹ Even the Buddha and the founder of Jainism lived around the same time. As both are peaceful religions, no violence was committed toward one another, but in the Buddhist texts at least, there were efforts by the Jains to challenge the Buddha in debate. Since the Buddhist texts were written by Buddhists, naturally the Buddha won. Interestingly, in one sutta of the Pali Canon, the Buddha converted a disciple of Jainism to his view, but when the disciple wanted to join his order, the Buddha said that this would disrespect that man’s teachers in the Jainist path, so he encouraged him to go back and just practice the Dharma through them. I doubt you’d see that in modern religious debates! :-/

² The same goddess he made a vow too under the Bodhi Tree as he touched the earth vowing not to move until he attained Enlightenment. Meanwhile, Saraswati also was absorbed in Japanese folk-religion as a luck goddess named Benzaiten (弁財天).