Comments on: Oh My Kami! Fujin | 風神

By: A-Yokai-A-Day: Ashura | MatthewMeyer.net

A-Yokai-A-Day: Ashura | MatthewMeyer.net — Wed, 21 Oct 2015 03:18:26 +0000

[…] Incidentally, if you’re interested in other connections, I wrote about one much earlier on my blog. […]

By: Epicurus

Epicurus — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 19:07:59 +0000

Bhiksuni, Matt is neither right nor wrong, and the wind god is probably neither strictly Hindi, Greek, or Japanese. What was beautiful about all these traditions, when they were at their best, was that they were inclusive, plural, and syncretic — meaning that, when they encountered other cultures, they did not seek to usurp their beliefs and assert their own “one true god,” but rather sought to emphasize the parallels between them. In the Greco-Bactrian case that Matt refers to, the Greeks who came with Alexander eventually became Buddhist monks and helped spread Buddhism to China and eventually to Japan, and to Zen, Shinto itself being “chin” or “zen” + “tao.” Many of the world’s problems can be traced to intolerance rather than acceptance, and to claiming a single correct “god” as one’s own, rather than recognizing that what is wondrous in the world to one group is probably also wondrous to another, and is to be respected by all.

By: bhiksuni Ratana

bhiksuni Ratana — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 23:07:00 +0000

Friend, you’re wrong. The wind god in Japan has more in common with the marut in India. The earliest mention of storm gods appears in the Rgveda, see this long url:
http://books.google.nl/books?id=-H0eiuvcG5IC&pg=PA170&lpg=PA170&dq=marut+mythology&source=bl&ots=jPGceyN6I4&sig=zlABMR025KzOXJPQ7uvycadbX3g&hl=nl&ei=29FSS4rnIcKF-QaXhZ3ZCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CCUQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=marut%20mythology&f=false
The veda were there long before Alexander packed up his storm god and headed eastward.

By: Matt

Matt — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 12:26:53 +0000

Thanks for the link! I’d never heard of the maruts before, but I will definitely do some reading. I’m pretty sure every culture has come up with their own wind gods; I’ve heard that the wind bag which Fujin carries comes from Boreas, but Fujin himself is native Japanese. Definitely a lot of Japanese imagery is strongly influenced by Indian religion and imagery!