Benzaiten

Summary

Benzaiten is the Japanese goddess of eloquence, music and learning, who later became a goddess of wealth as well; she is the Indian Sarasvatī, who came to Japan with Buddhism. The Japanese Nipponica encyclopedia says her name translates the name Sarasvatī, which means in Sanskrit "she who has water"; that the Brāhmaṇas made Sarasvatī the goddess of speech; that the Golden Light Sutra brought her into Buddhism; and that she is shown with eight arms or with two, sometimes holding the Japanese lute called biwa. Later the Japanese wrote her name with the graph for "wealth" in place of the graph for "talent", so she became a goddess of wealth and one of the Seven Gods of Fortune; she is mostly worshipped by water and is often linked with snakes.

The oldest text that portrays her in East Asia is the Golden Light Sutra in the Chinese translation of the monk Yijing, of 703. It says that the great goddess of eloquence rose in the assembly, bowed at the Buddha's feet and said: whoever preaches this sutra, I will increase his wisdom and adorn his speech with eloquence, and if he forgets any of its words or meanings I will make him remember. Then she described a bath prepared from thirty-two fragrant herbs and medicines, over which a spell is recited one hundred and eight times, so that whoever bathes in it is freed from evil stars, plague, quarrels, bad dreams and sorcery. Then a Brahmin praised her in a hymn saying that she dwells on the Vindhya mountain with lions and tigers about her, that at river crossings she is like a bridge or a raft, that her face is like the full moon, and that she "is always adorned with eight arms, holding bow, arrow, sword, spear, axe, long pestle, iron wheel and noose".

In Japan three islands are counted her greatest places of worship: Chikubushima in Lake Biwa, Enoshima in the sea near Kamakura, and Itsukushima. The Hōgonji temple on Chikubushima says that in 724 the emperor Shōmu dreamt that Amaterasu told him: in the lake of Ōmi there is a small island, a holy place of Benzaiten; build a temple there and the land will have peace and good harvests; so he sent the monk Gyōki, who carved her image in the form of a woman. The Tale of the Heike tells that the warrior Taira no Tsunemasa played the lute on the island to pray for victory, and its deity appeared to him as a white dragon. In the Noh play Chikubushima an envoy of the emperor Daigo crosses to the island in an old fisherman's boat with a young woman, who says that Benzaiten is a woman and so the island is not closed to women, and vanishes; at night Benzaiten comes out and dances the dance of the heavenly woman, and the dragon god rises from the lake bringing gold, silver and jewels and says he guards the land.

In the Noh play Enoshima the emperor Kinmei sends a man to see an island that has risen out of the eastern sea; two fishermen meet him, and the elder says he is the deity of Tatsunokuchi, "the Dragon's Mouth", and vanishes; at night a heavenly being appears with two boys, offers a jewel and dances. The Enoshima shrine is a shrine of three goddesses, kami born in Takamagahara from the sword of Susanoo when he and his sister made their pledge, who were later taken as Benzaiten when Buddhism and the kami cult were joined. In 1182 Minamoto no Yoritomo had the monk Mongaku invite Benzaiten to the island to seek her help, and later people came to her to ask for rain.

The idea her stories turn on is that water stays with her wherever she goes. In India she was a river and then became speech flowing on the tongue; in Japan she is worshipped on islands in the water, an island in a lake and an island that rose out of the sea, and the dragon who lives in the water is joined to her. The flowing speech became the music of the lute in her hands, and the warrior who plays the lute on her island prays for victory as princes in India prayed to the river. Then people swapped one graph for another that sounds the same, talent became wealth, and the goddess stayed the same.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since the essays do not read Benzaiten; the Hindu Semitic essay reads only the name Sarasvatī. 弁才天, Benzaiten, is three graphs: 天 ten, heaven, the Buddhist word for a deity; 才 zai, talent, later replaced by 財 zai, wealth, the two graphs having the same sound; and 弁 ben, which the sutra writes 辯, eloquence and disputation, whose brother 辨, with the same sound, means to distinguish and separate. We read ben as Arabic bāna and bayān: in Lane bāna is "it became separated, severed, distinct", and bayān is "perspicuity, clearness, distinctness, or eloquence, of speech", with the tradition "verily there is a kind of eloquence that is enchantment" and the verse "He created man, He taught him al-bayān". So in Arabic the letters b and n hold what the two Chinese graphs hold: separating one thing from another, and clear speech. On this reading Benzaiten is the goddess of bayān, which is her work in the Golden Light Sutra: to adorn the preacher's speech and remind him of what he forgot. The Hindu essay reads the name Sarasvatī from sarā, and her page reads it "she of the sariyy", the running stream: the Indian name keeps the water and the Japanese name keeps the eloquence.

Linguistic Root

Eloquence and distinguishing

Baxter and Sagart's list of Old Chinese puts the graphs 辯 and 辨 in one syllable, pronounced bjenX in Middle Chinese and reconstructed as *[b]renʔ in Old Chinese; the first means "distinguish, dispute", the second "distinguish". So the Chinese word joins distinguishing and disputation, as the Arabic root b-y-n joins separation, distinctness and eloquence. In Lane bāna is "it became separated, severed, disunited, or cut off", bānat al-marʾa, "she became separated by divorce", and bayān is "making the meaning apparent to the mind so that it becomes distinct from other meanings", "perspicuity, clearness, distinctness, chasteness, or eloquence, of speech", while "such a one is abyan than such a one" means more eloquent.

The correspondence: b is b, n is n, and the y of bayān is a glide like the j of bjen. The weak point was that Old Chinese as Baxter and Sagart reconstruct it has an r after the b with nothing to answer it in Arabic. But this name was not made in Old Chinese. The first Chinese translation of the Golden Light Sutra, made by Dharmakṣema in the Northern Liang kingdom early in the fifth century, calls her 大辯天神, "the great deity of eloquence", and Yijing's translation of 703 calls her 大辯才天女 and gives her a chapter of her own. In that period, that is, in Middle Chinese, 辯 was pronounced bjenX, the old r having been lost centuries before, as Baxter and Sagart's list distinguishes the two stages. So the letters from which the name was made are b, y and n, the letters of bayān in order, with nothing added or missing. The reading concerns the Chinese word 辯 in the name; 才 "talent" and 天 "heaven, deity" keep their Chinese senses, and the name Sarasvatī is read on her own page.

Talent and wealth

The same list gives 才, "talent", and 財, "wealth", one sound, Middle Chinese dzoj, Old Chinese *[dz]ˤə. So when the Japanese wrote her name 弁財天 the pronunciation did not change, while the meaning moved from talent to wealth, and Nipponica says the Japanese then worshipped her as a goddess of wealth.

The name Sarasvatī

The Hindu Semitic essay reads the name Sarasvatī from sarā and sawat, the river that runs straight, and in another analysis gives sarā alone a strong grade. The Sarasvatī page reads it "she of the sariyy", once the Sanskrit suffix meaning "possessing" is removed. Nipponica says the name means in Sanskrit "she who has water". So the two names, Indian and Japanese, divide the goddess between them: the first names her by the water, the second by speech.

Key Mythic Narratives

Snake and dragon

Nipponica says that in Japan Benzaiten is linked with snakes because the snake belongs to the water, and that a deity called Ugajin is joined to her, suggesting his name may come from Sanskrit uraga, "snake". The stories of her islands all have a dragon: the white dragon who appears to Tsunemasa on Chikubushima, the dragon god who brings jewels in her play, and the deity of "the Dragon's Mouth" at Enoshima.

From war to wealth

The goddess of the Golden Light Sutra is a warrior with eight arms who lives on the mountain among lions and tigers and is present in battles. In Japan she came to be shown seated with two arms playing the lute, and counted among the Seven Gods of Fortune. Among her shrines in Kamakura is one where people wash their coins, known as the coin-washing Benten. The Hōgonji temple says that in 1871, when the government separated Buddhism from the kami cult, it ordered the temple turned into a shrine; only the main hall was handed over, and the goddess was given a new hall in 1942.

Symbolic Reading

The Hindu Semitic essay reads Sarasvatī from sarā, travelling by night, and makes her the knowledge that ripens in quiet and darkness, since the philosopher, the poet and the musician work in stillness, so that she is "the one who flows into souls in silence". That is its reading of Sarasvatī.

In the Japanese stories of Benzaiten the goddess also appears at night: in Chikubushima she comes out after the fishermen have vanished and night has fallen, and in Enoshima the heavenly being appears at night.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

The goddess closest to her is Sarasvatī herself, the river who became speech in India. In Iran Anahita is a woman and a river at once, whose chariot is drawn by wind, rain, cloud and sleet; kings and heroes come to her with offerings and ask her for victory, and she grants it to those who protect people and refuses those who would destroy them. In Japan the warrior Tsunemasa plays the lute on Benzaiten's island to ask for victory, and Yoritomo invites her to Enoshima. In both the goddess is a water to whom victory is prayed for.

In Sumer Nisaba is the goddess of writing and grain, "chief scribe of An", who opens her "house of wisdom" to Enmerkar; the scribes close their tablets with "Nisaba be praised", and Enki blesses her to be "keeper of the seal in the treasury" and heaper of grain in the stores. Like Benzaiten she joins learning and speech to plenty and wealth.