. central divinities 125
of Buddhist temples and images of him are usually placed in or near
temple gates together with images of the Four Heavenly Kings.^108
Śrīmahādevī or Lakṣmī/Pārvatī, wife of Śiva, first appears in a Bud-
dhist context in the Suvarṇaprabhāsa sūtra. In China her cult devel-
oped gradually prior to the Tang, but did not attain popularity until
the Kaiyuan period. At this time, she was transformed from her origi-
nally peaceful form to a more martial aspect.^109 The two main scrip-
tures for her cult in this later period are the Mahāśrī sūtra^110 and the
Śrīmahādevī-vyākaraṇa,^111 both of which are said to have been trans-
lated by Amoghavajra. She is also found as a minor divinity in the
Dharmadhātu Mandala.
Yama, Lord of Death: The netherworld in medieval Chinese Bud-
dhism represents a whole realm of its own, reflecting a cultural com-
promise between Indian Buddhist beliefs and those of the receiving
culture. Hence, the accepted version of the netherworld during the
Tang was a subterranean realm, a dark copy of our own world, lorded
over by Yama, originally an Indian god who had been recast in the role
of a Chinese judge and magistrate.
Sometime before the Tang, probably as a result of the lengthy and
complex intercultural process though which Buddhism became a Chi-
nese religion, the cult of Yama with its associated lore of the hells
was mixed with local Chinese beliefs concerning Mt. Tai as the
gate to the netherworld.^112 This resulted in a cultural compromise in
which the Buddhist hells and the traditional Chinese images of the
netherworld were conflated. By the second half of the Tang, a group
of ten judges or kings, including Yama and his nine fellow judges,
and an array of demonic assistants were in place to operate the neth-
erworld.^113 Even so, in classical Zhenyan Buddhism of the mid-Tang
(and later in Japanese Shingon), Yama retains his more obvious Indian
form and function, evidenced by the iconography associated with the
Dharmadhātu Mandala (figure 16).
(^108) Cf. Shanxisheng Bowuguan, comp. 1988.
(^109) Cf. Ludvik 1999–2000.
(^110) T. 1252.
(^111) T. 1253.
(^112) For a discussion of this phenomenon in the context of Esoteric Buddhism, see
Osabe 1971a. Additional data may also be had from Gjertson 1989.
(^113) See Teiser 1994.