Batō Kannon
Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia is now 14 years old
Our Encyclopedia recently received a wonderful opportunity for a major renewal on its 14th birthday . After many years of growing our Encyclopedia had become bit slow and sometimes even decided not to answer when people knocked on the door.
A very big thank you and blessings to Dmytro Rudiy (rudiy.nl) for his great work in upgrading the server, website and all of the infrastructure and helping make TBE fast and reliable again for everyone!
We kindly ask our readers to help us cover the cost of this important upgrade and also help with the ongoing costs of keeping the Encyclopedia alive and freely available.
or card
Every little donation helps and every one is deeply appreciated. 🙏🙏🙏
OM AH HUM VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUM 🙏🙏🙏
May blessings shower down on all of yous 🙏🙏🙏
- See also :
- See also :
The “Horse-Headed Kannon” is considered Protector of Animals. He is the only manifestation of Kannon that shows rage. Batō Kannon is also one of the the warlike and wrathful deities of Esoteric Buddhism; in this role, the deity is known as Batō Myō-ō.
As typical, Batō Kannon is here depicted capped by the horse head and flame-haired, with three eyes, three heads and eight arms. He expresses anger by his wide open eyes and open mouth. The primary hands make the gesture of bakô-in (“mudra of the horse mouth”), pressing together the palms with the index and ring fingers bent and the rest of his fingers extended). In his other hands he holds a sacred wheel and a rosary, while a staff, a lotus flower and a sword or an ax are missing. The legs on this sculpture are rather unusual, with the lotus position instead of the more common anraku-za (relaxed position). The lotus pedestal mounted over a tall base is of good quality, with petals individually carved, and incorporates a round mandorla carved with clouds.
In the Edo period, Batō came to be worshiped as a protector of horses due to his iconography and his role as saviour of those in the realm of animals. Many remaining stone statues of Batō were once set in place to protect travellers and their horses from injury on dangerous paths.
Well-known examples dating from the Kamakura period include the standing statues in Kanzeonji, Joururiji and Nakayamaji. The similarities of our figure to these famous examples suggest it had been made in the area of Kyoto.