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Two other Japanese examples derive from Buddhist importations of Indian dragon myths. Benzaiten, the Japanese form of Saraswati, supposedly killed a five-headed dragon at Enoshima in 552. Kuzuryū (九頭龍, "nine-headed dragon"), deriving from the nagarajas (snake-kings) Vasuki and Shesha, is worshipped at Togakushi Shrine in Nagano Prefecture.
In Babylonian mythology, Kingu, along with his dragon mother, Tiamat, were slain by the war-god Marduk in the primordial battle of the Enuma Elish. Afterward, the gods mixed Kingu's blood with clay and created humans. A variant of this myth, from the Atra-Hasis epic, says that the minor god Geshtu-E was sacrificed to make humans with his blood.
Even though the kijin and onryō of Japanese Buddhist faith have taken humans' lives, there is the opinion that there is no "death god" that merely leads people into the world of the dead. [6] In Postwar Japan , however, the Western notion of a death god entered Japan, and shinigami started to become mentioned as an existence with a human nature.
The name Kuraokami combines kura 闇 "dark; darkness; closed" and okami 龗 "dragon tutelary of water". This uncommon kanji (o)kami or rei 龗, borrowed from the Chinese character ling 龗 "rain-dragon; mysterious" (written with the "rain" radical 雨, 3 口 "mouths", and a phonetic of long 龍 "dragon") is a variant Chinese character for Japanese rei < Chinese ling 靈 "rain-prayer ...
' Spirit, God, Deity, Divinity ') – A term broadly meaning spirit or deity, but has several separate meanings: deities mentioned in Japanese mythologies and local deities protecting areas, villages and families. [6] unnamed and non-anthropomorphic spirits found in natural phenomena. [6] a general sense of sacred power. [6]
A sword god, a god of thunder, and a participant in the first recorded sumo wrestling match, which was against Takeminakata. He is the son of Ame-no-ohabari via the spilled blood of Kagu-tsuchi . He also subdued Amatsu-Mikaboshi and tries to keep the giant catfish Namazu from causing earthquakes at the kaname-ishi , the rock that holds down the ...
The Gashadokuro is a spirit that takes the form of a giant skeleton made of the skulls of people who died in the battlefield or of starvation/famine (while the corpse becomes a gashadokuro, the spirit becomes a separate yōkai, known as hidarugami.), and is 10 or more meters tall.
Ikiryō (生霊) from the 1776 book Gazu Hyakki Yagyō by Sekien Toriyama. Ikiryō (生霊, lit. "living ghost"), also known as shōryō (しょうりょう), seirei (せいれい), or ikisudama (いきすだま), [1] is a disembodied spirit or ghost in Japanese popular belief and fiction that leaves the body of a living person and subsequently haunts other people or places, sometimes across ...