- XVII-XVIII

B-1147

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 10.3; Diametro: 4.2

Bronzo a fusione piena, con patinatura scura

Kangiten, the Buddhist form of Ganesha, is recognizable by his elephant head, the Hindu god of fortune who has the power to remove obstacles. The cult of Kangiten arrived in Japan between the 8th and 9th centuries from China together with esoteric Buddhism which includes many deities of Indian origin. At this stage he was represented as a single deity with several arms, similar to Ganesha. During the late Heian period (794-1185), however, images of couples of Kangiten (Sōshin Kangiten) appeared, in which two anthropomorphic figures with elephant heads, a male and a female, embrace; an iconography totally absent in the Indian tradition. The hugging Kangiten would represent a legend told in various Buddhist texts where the evil deity Vinayaka (another name for Ganesha) is pacified by the eleven-faced Kannon, who transformed into a beautiful woman and joins him, with the intention of putting him on the right path that leads to the understanding of Buddhist truths. The female has the toes above those of the male, a symbol of the submission of the malevolent nature of Vinayaka by Kannon. Kangiten, like the Indian Ganesha, was therefore initially seen as a malevolent god, creator of obstacles. Once pacified by Kannon, however, he becomes, on the contrary, a benevolent deity. The most common representations of Kangiten are small metal statuettes that were used in rituals in which oil was poured on the images. This statuette was probably used for this type of ceremony. The statuettes were then kept inside a cylindrical case and hidden from the view of the faithful. The Kangiten images are in fact secret images, not shown to the public due to their strong erotic meaning and they are therefore often preserved by Japanese temples as "hidden Buddhas" (hibutsu).