Worship of the Buddha Tejaprabha (Buddha of Blazing Light) emerged in China during the Tang dynasty (618–907) and spread to Korea and Japan with the eastward movement of Buddhism. In East Asian Buddhism, Tejaprabha controls such celestial bodies as the Sun and Moon, the five visible planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn), the twelve Chinese zodiac constellations (based on Jupiter’s twelve-year orbit, as opposed to the twelve Western zodiac constellations, which are based on the annual movements of the sun), and the twenty-eight constellations known as the lunar mansions. It is possible that this Buddha’s cult began along the Central Asian Silk Road, which led from China across the Taklamakan Desert to what is now Afghanistan, and further west to the Mediterranean world. The earliest known painted images of Tejaprabha have been found at the Dunhuang caves in Gansu Province, western China, and at the ruined city of Khara-Khoto in Inner Mongolia.
It is significant that Tejaprabha rules over deities who are Daoist in origin. The merging of Daoism and Buddhism in China is analogous to that of Buddhism and shamanism in Korea, and Buddhism and Shinto in Japan. This is visible in both Korean and Japanese images of Tejaprabha, in which he is also accompanied by the same planetary and constellation deities, the latter usually depicted in the guise of Daoist priests. Here, he is accompanied by Shoulao, the popular Chinese god of longevity (identifiable by his high, domed cranium), and the gods of the Seven Stars of the Northern (Big) Dipper, the most powerful constellation in the East Asian sky. So important was the Northern Dipper on both the personal and national levels that cults specific to the Seven Stars evolved in China, Korea, and Japan.
Stephen Little
2022
