Hall of Four Heavenly Kings | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
![]() | |||||||
Chinese name | |||||||
Traditional Chinese | 天王殿 | ||||||
Simplified Chinese | 天王殿 | ||||||
Literal meaning | Hall of Four Heavenly Kings | ||||||
| |||||||
Korean name | |||||||
Hangul | 천왕문 | ||||||
Hanja | 天王門 | ||||||
Literal meaning | Gate of the Heavenly Kings |
The Hall of Four Heavenly Kings or Four Heavenly Kings Hall (Chinese: 天王殿; pinyin: Tiānwángdiàn), referred to as Hall of Heavenly Kings, is the first important hall inside a shanmen (mount gate) in Chinese Buddhist temples and is named due to the Four Heavenly Kings statues enshrined in the hall.[1]
Maitreya Buddha is enshrined in the Hall of Heavenly King and at the back of his statue is a statue of Skanda Bodhisattva facing the northern Mahavira Hall.[1] In Buddhism, the Maitreya Buddha, also the future Buddha is Sakyamuni's successor.[1] In the history of Chinese Buddhism, Maitreya Buddha has the handsome image in which he wears a coronet on his head and yingluo (瓔珞) on his body and his hands pose in mudras.[1] According to Song-dynasty Biographies of Eminent Monks (《宋高僧傳》; Sung kao-seng chuan), in the Later Liang Dynasty (907-923), there was a fat and big-stomached monk named "Qici" (契此和尚) in Fenghua of Mingzhou (now Zhejiang).[1] Carrying a sack on his shoulder, he always begged in the markets and streets, laughing.[1] So local people called him "The Sack Monk" (布袋和尚).[1] When he reached his Parinirvana, he left a Buddhist Gatha: "Maitreya, the true Maitreya, has thousands of hundreds of millions of manifestations, often instructing people of their time, even when they themselves do not recognize him." (彌勒真彌勒,分身百千億,時時示世人,世人總不識。)[1] So he was seen as the manifestation of Maitreya Buddha.[1] Since then, in Chinese Buddhist temples, Maitreya statues were shaped into a big fat monk's image with a big head and ears, laughing with his upper body exposed and cross-legged.[1]
The Skanda Bodhisattva behind him is the Dharmapalass of Buddhist temples.[1] As with Maitreya Buddha, the Skanda Bodhisattva's image has changed into that of a handsome ancient Chinese general who wore armors, and held a vajra in hand.[1]
Four Heavenly Kings' statues are enshrined in the left and right side of the Four Heavenly Kings Hall.[1] There are the eastern Dhṛtarāṣṭra (持國天王; Dhṛtarāṣṭra wears white clothes and armor and has a pipa, a Chinese plucked string musical instrument, in his hand), the southern Virūḍhaka (增長天王; Virūḍhaka wears blue clothes with a sword in his hand), the western Virūpākṣa (廣目天王; Virūpākṣa wears red clothes with a dragon or a snake wrapped around his arm), and the northern Vaiśravaṇa (多聞天王; Vaiśravaṇa wears green clothes with a precious umbrella in his right hand and a silver sacred mouse in his left hand).[1] The Four Heavenly Kings are said to live in Mount Meru and their task is to protect the world in their direction respectively.[1][2][3]