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bonnet. He has a Chinese face, white moustache and beard and rather hooded eyes.
However, in the Pi-yun Ssu, also in the Western Hills, his modern image depicts him in what appears to be a sarong held up by a long blue bow, and with a bare chest. His shoulders are covered with a decorated blue robe down to his knees, parted revealing his bare chest, and an unusual bonnet which appears to have a pair of short wings extending out beyond his ears. He has a squat nose, large mouth and is holding his right hand making a mystic sign at chest height. His left hand grips an incense-stick holder at waist height. He looks marginally less Chinese than the other images but does not look Indian.
Paired with Indra, he stands in prime position at the head of one of the two rows of fourteen Deva.
2] Indra, known in Chinese as Ti Shih and Yin-t'o-lo
He is the greatest of the Vedic deities with the dual function of weather and war god, known also as Sakra Devanam. He has been adopted by Buddhists as representative of secular powers, protector of the religious body but inferior to any Buddhist saint. He is said to have taken an oath to defend Buddhism during a former incarnation and was reborn as the King of the Yakshas.
Although some Chinese Buddhists identify Indra as the Taoist supreme deity, the Jade Emperor, Brahma is much more commonly accepted as a form of the Jade Emperor.
His image is present in both the Ta Pei Ssu and in the Pi-yun Ssu, and in both he is completely Chinese with no hint whatsoever of foreign origins. He is standing, an ancient minister, dressed in colourful decorated Chinese robes and imperial bonnet, with pink flesh, a black moustache and goatee, and with both hands held together before his chest, fingers pointing upward.
In Hong Kong he has been paired with Brahma on altars and is portrayed carrying a golden bowl somewhat similar to an incense pot. He is depicted in a form and dress virtually identical with that of Brahma,
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bonnet. He has a Chinese face, white moustache and beard and rather hooded eyes.
However, in the Pi-yun Ssu, also in the Western Hills, his modern image depicts him in what appears to be a sarong held up by a long blue bow, and with a bare chest. His shoulders are covered with a deco- rated blue robe down to his knees, parted revealing his bare chest, and an unusual bonnet which appears to have a pair of short wings extend- ing out beyond his ears. He has a squat nose, large mouth and is hold- ing his right hand making a mystic sign at chest height. His left hand grips an incense-stick holder at waist height. He looks marginally less Chinese than the other images but does not look Indian.
Paired with Indra, he stands in prime position at the head of one of the two rows of fourteen Deva.
2] Indra, known in Chinese as Ti Shih and Yin-t'o-lo B
He is the greatest of the Vedic deities with the dual function of weather and war god, known also as Sakra Devanam. He has been adopted by Buddhists as representative of secular powers, protector of the religious body but inferior to any Buddhist saint. He is said to have taken an oath to defend Buddhism during a former incarnation and was reborn as the King of the Yakshas.
Although some Chinese Buddhists identify Indra as the Taoist supreme deity, the Jade Emperor, Brahma is much more commonly accepted as a form of the Jade Emperor.
His image is present in both the Ta Pei Ssu and in the Pi-yun Ssu, and in both he is completely Chinese with no hint whatsoever of for- eign origins. He is standing, an ancient minister, dressed in colourful decorated Chinese robes and imperial bonnet, with pink flesh, a black moustache and goatee, and with both hands held together before his chest, fingers pointing upward.
In Hong Kong he has been paired with Brahma on altars and is portrayed carrying a golden bowl somewhat similar to an incense pot. He is depicted in a form and dress virtually identical with that of Brahma,
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