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firms that the majority of deities in these two temples are Deva. The categorization of the Twenty-eight Immortals as Deva was arrived at by comparing the Sanskrit identities of the twenty-eight images and the list of the Twenty Deva provided by Soothill. The minor variation in inclusion and omission between the Twenty Deva listed by Soothill, the Twenty-two Deva in the Ta Pei Ssu and the Twenty-five in the Pi-yun Ssu cannot be explained.
In some temples the Deva have been equated with the Asuras. This is incorrect as the Asuras are those who are not only not Deva but are, according to some writings, the greatest enemies of the Deva and, in others, it is written that the Asuras are anti-gods and not, as claimed so often in English, demons.
It would not have been possible to identify any one of the images of the Deva without its Sinicised Sanskrit title on the tablet before it apart, that is, from the three fundamentally Chinese deities with their Chinese titles included within the Deva groups, Wei T'o and the four T'ien Wang Guardians.
Images within the Two Temples in the Western Hills
Within the main hall of both temples, apart from the images of the Deva lining the side walls, stands the popular and well-known Buddhist bodhisattva, the Goddess of Mercy, Kuan Yin adapted from images brought from India where he [a male deity at that time] was the Brahmanist deity Avalokitesvara. In the Ta Pei Ssu she is alone whereas in the Pi-yun Ssu she is sitting crossed-legged and is flanked by two pairs of secondary bodhisattva. The first pair is Wen Shu and P'u-Hsien, whose Sanskrit titles are Manjusri and Samatabhadra respectively. They were two of the twelve divine Buddhist teachers. They in turn are flanked by another pair of bodhisattvas, Ti-tsang Wang, the Saviour of the Underworld and Ta-shih Chih. The latter is one of the members of the retinue of Amitabha [O-mi-t'u Fu] known in Sanskrit as Kshitigarbha and Mahasthama respectively. Mahasthama is believed to be the deified Maudgalyayana, the right hand disciple of the Buddha, Gautama.
In the Pi-yun Ssu, the bodhisattva Saviour of the Underworld, Ti-tsang Wang, is depicted in his modern standard form, sitting side-