Marishiten　摩利支天

KEY WORD :　art history / iconography

Transliteration of Sanskrit Marici, the name of a Buddhist goddess representing an amalgamation of several Hindu antecedents, primarily the god Marici, who is considered to have been a son of Brahma *Bonten 梵天 or one of the ten patriarchs created by the first lawgiver Manu. The deity assumed female form on adoption into Buddhism. Since marici means light or mirage, Marici was regarded as a deification of mirages and being thus invisible or difficult to see was invoked in order to escape the notice of one's enemies. This martial aspect has been carried over in the cult of Marishiten in Japan, where she came to be revered as a tutelary deity of the warrior class. Later she was also worshipped as a goddess of wealth and prosperity among the merchant class, being counted along with *Daikokuten 大黒天 and *Benzaiten 弁才天 as one of a trio of three deities, santen 三天 invoked for such a purpose during the Edo period. She assumes a variety of forms and may have one, three, five or six faces and two, six, eight, ten or twelve arms; in her many-faced manifestations one of her faces is that of a sow, and she rides either a sow or a chariot drawn by seven pigs. Images of Marishiten are common in India, but there are few examples in Japan. Shoutaku-in 聖沢院 (Kyoto) has a polychrome painting said to be of Korean provenance, while Tokudaiji 徳大寺 (Tokyo) is dedicated to a large image of her dubiously attributed to Shoutoku Taishi 聖徳太子 (574-622). The Nispannayogavali also describes a mandala *mandara 曼荼羅 centred on Marishiten.

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