The Vajrapani-Hercules connection

KIM SEUNG-JUNG
The author is a professor of archaeology at the University of Toronto.

The Vajrapanis guarding the left and right sides of the entrance to the Seokguram’s main rotunda are guardian deities boasting muscular bodies and tough expressions. “Vajarapani” in Sanskrit means the one holding vajra, or the thunderbolt of Indra, in hand.

In early Mahayana Buddhism, this bodhisattva representing physical strength is characterized by a terrifying appearance to drive evil spirits away. Therefore, it is understandable that the Vajrapani statues — seen in the remnants of Gandharan Buddhism and developed around Pakistan 2,000 years ago — borrowed from the image of Hercules in Greek mythology.

The Vajrapani in Gandharan art often accompanies Buddha, wearing lion skin on the head and holding a club, just like Hercules, and appears in a naked form to boast its physical strength. Hercules, the most powerful male figure in Greek mythology, wears the skin of the immortal Nemean lion that he killed with his bare hands as his armor and is not defeated in a battle against Apollo. Hercules, a half-human, half-god, is conceptually in line with the bodhisattva who connects God and man.

What is even more interesting is that the Hercules motif spread to the Tang Dynasty through early Gandharan Buddhist art. Among the pottery statues excavated in Changan, the capital of Tang, around the seventh century during the heyday of Chinese Buddhist culture, a warrior with uncanny resemblance to Hercules can be found. There is also a theory that this extends to the “tiger hat” worn by children of the Qing Dynasty.

But it goes too far if you think that one aspect of Chinese folk culture originates from Western classical culture. The view that Gandharan art was influenced by Hellenism derived from the belief that dominant culture had a unilateral influence on inferior culture.

Early Buddhism strategically absorbed elements of Hinduism and Jainism as well as Western cultures that coexisted at the time. As it spread to the East, Buddhism further prospered after combining with indigenous religions such as Confucianism, Taoism, and Shintoism.