Benzaiten

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Benzaiten

Benzaiten (???, ???) is the Japanese

Japanese language

IPA: [n?iho?go] is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Ryukyuan languages....
name for the Hindu

Hinduism

'Hinduism' is the predominant religion of the Indian subcontinent. Hinduism is often referred to as , a Sanskrit phrase meaning "the eternal dharma", by its practitioners....
goddess Saraswati

Saraswati

Hindus believe that Saraswati is the Devi of knowledge, music and the arts. Saraswati has been identified with the Vedic period Saraswati River....
; there was an important river in ancient India

India

India, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, the List of countries by population country, and the most populous liberal democracy in the world....
of this name (see Vedic Saraswati River). Worship of Benzaiten arrived in Japan during the 6th through 8th centuries, mainly via the Chinese

Chinese language

Chinese or the Sinitic language is a language family consisting of language mutually unintelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan languages of languages....
translations of the Sutra of Golden Light, which has a section devoted to her.

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Encyclopedia

Benzaiten (???, ???) is the Japanese

Japanese language

IPA: [n?iho?go] is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Ryukyuan languages....
name for the Hindu

Hinduism

'Hinduism' is the predominant religion of the Indian subcontinent. Hinduism is often referred to as , a Sanskrit phrase meaning "the eternal dharma", by its practitioners....
goddess Saraswati

Saraswati

Hindus believe that Saraswati is the Devi of knowledge, music and the arts. Saraswati has been identified with the Vedic period Saraswati River....
; there was an important river in ancient India

India

Chinese language

Lotus Sutra

The Lotus Sutra or Sutra on the White Sacred lotus of the Sublime Dharma is one of the most popular and influential Mahayana sutras in Asia and the basis on which the Tien Tai and Nichiren Buddhism sects of Buddhism were established....
. She is often depicted holding a biwa
Biwa

The biwa is a Japanese short-necked fretted lute, and a close variant of the Chinese pipa. The biwa is the chosen instrument of Benzaiten, goddess of music, eloquence, poetry, and education in Japanese Buddhism....
, which is a traditional Japanese lute.

Transfer from India to Japan

Her Sanskrit name is "Sarasvatî Devî", which means "flowing water", and so Benzaiten is the goddess of everything that flows: water, words (and knowledge, by extension), speech, eloquence, and music. The characters used initially to write her name, read "Biancaitian" in Chinese and "Bensaiten" in Japanese, reflected her role as the goddess of eloquence. Because the Sutra of Golden Light promised protection of the state, in Japan she became a protector-deity, at first of the state and then of people. Lastly, she became one of the Seven Gods of Fortune, and the Sino-Japanese characters used to write her name changed to ??? (Benzaiten), which reflects her role in bestowing monetary fortune. Sometimes she is called Benten, although this name refers to the goddess Lakshmi

Lakshmi

Lakshmi is the Hindu goddess of wealth, prosperity, purity, and generosity; and the embodiment of beauty, grace and charm. Representations of Lakshmi are found also in Jainism and Buddhist monuments, with the earliest archeological representation found in Buddhist monuments....
.

In the Rig-Veda (6.61.7) Sarasvati is credited with killing the three-headed Vritra

Vritra

In the Historical Vedic religion, Vritra "the enveloper", was an Asura and also a naga or dragon, the personification of drought and enemy of Indra....
, also known as Ahi ("snake"). This is probably one of the sources of Sarasvati/Benzaiten's close association with snakes and dragons in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
. She is enshrined on the Island of Enoshima

Enoshima

Enoshima is a small island, about 4 km in circumference, at the mouth of the Katase River, which flows into Sagami Bay in Japan. Part of the city of Fujisawa, Kanagawa, it is linked to the Katase section of the same city on the mainland by a 600 meter-long bridge....
in Sagami Bay

Sagami Bay

Sagami Bay , also known as the Sagami Gulf or Sagami Sea, lies south of Kanagawa Prefecture in Honshu, central Japan, contained within the scope of the Miura Peninsula, in Kanagawa, to the east, the Izu Peninsula, in Shizuoka Prefecture, to the west, and the Shonan coastline to the north, while the island of Oshima marks the sout...
, about 50 kilometers south of Tokyo

Tokyo

, officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan of Japan and located on the eastern side of the main island Honshu. The twenty-three special wards of Tokyo, each governed as a city, cover the area that was once the Tokyo City in the eastern part of the prefecture, and total over 8 million people....
, and numerous other locations throughout Japan; and she and a five-headed dragon

Chinese dragon

The China dragon or Oriental dragon is a mythical creature in East Asian culture with a China origin. It is visualized these days as a long, scaled, snake-like creature with four legs and five claws on each ....
are the central figures of the Enoshima Engi

Enoshima Engi

The Enoshima Engi is a history of the temples and shrines on Enoshima Island in Sagami Bay. It was written in Chinese language, the scholarly language of the time, by the Japanese Buddhist monk Kokei in 1047 A.D....
, a history of the shrines on Enoshima written by the Japanese Buddhist monk Kokei

Kokei

Kokei , the author of the Enoshima Engi, was an eminent Japanese Buddhist monk. He is said to have commenced his career as a monk at the age of seven, when he climbed Mt....
in AD 1047. According to Kokei, Benzaiten is the third daughter of the dragon-king of Munetsuchi (???; literally "lake without heat"), known in Sanskrit

Sanskrit

Sanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India....
as Anavatapta

Anavatapta

Anavatapta is the lake lying at the center of the world, according to an ancient Buddhist cosmological view. The name Anavatapta means "heat-free"; the waters of the lake were thought to be able to soothe the fires that torment beings....
, the lake lying at the center of the world according to an ancient Buddhist cosmological view.

Benzaiten has been syncretized

Syncretism

Syncretism consists of the attempt to reconcile disparate or contrary beliefs, often while melding practices of various schools of thought. The term may refer to attempts to merge and analogy several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion, and thus assert an underlying unity allowing for an inclu...
with some Shinto

Shinto

is the former state religion of Japan and remains the most common name for the nation's non-Buddhist ethnic religion practices. It was formed from disparate local mythologies, beginning with the Kojiki of 712, into an imperial cult called State Shinto that solidified in the Meiji period....
goddesses.

External links

Sources

Japan and Indian Asia by Hajime Nakamura. Publisher: Firma KLM, 1961. Publication Date: 1961
India and Japan: A Study in interaction during 5th cent - 14th century - By Upendra Thakur .