MARICI'S YEAR

Given its the Year of the Pig perhaps the "patron" divinity should be #Marici known as #Marishi or #Marichi in Japan and #molishitian in China.

If you're travelling in Japan and see something similar to this you are probably near an Esoteric Buddhist Temple once favored by Samurai who quite liked the idea of the god/goddess as an archer.

More on Marici in the next posts.

I have also finished a couple of New Year cards I'll be sharing soon!

Japanese Benten

Here's the Japanese equivalent of Sarasvati. You can see the Chinese influence on the iconography and painting style.

Dear readers I am bumping older blog posts done before I set up  a cross link with google+. As the widget that does this will not cross post (PRE)scheduled posts please use the Share button so other people can enjoy these posts. This is one of a sequence of 4 posts showing how depictions of Sarasvati changed from India to Japanese and elsewhere. 

Buddhist Temple SHA CHA Hanzi

SHA / cha is a less common term for  a Buddhist Temple

Copyright Julie Vaux 2013 

Buddhist temples that do not have pagodas or gate towers will probably still have a small stupa or a bell tower / pavilion.