Thirteen Buddhas

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The Thirteen Buddhas (Jp. 十三仏 jūsanbutsu) is a purely Japanese grouping of various important Buddhist deities. The deities are, in fact, mostly not Buddhas at all, but also include assorted bodhisattvas and Wisdom Kings.

JUSAN BUTSU, the Thirteen Buddhas of the Shingon School, are often found represented together in painted images consisting of five Buddhas, seven Bodhisattvas and Fudô Myôô. All together they represent the chief deities of the Taizokai and Kongokai mandalas. In Shingon these thirteen Buddhas assist people during their life and continue to assist them after death to guide them into the realm of enlightenment

The timeline, respectively to the list above, of invocation by living Shingon followers for the deceased believer is as follows: seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, twenty-eighth, thirty-fifth, forty-second, forty-ninth, one hundredth days and on the first year, third year, seventh-year, thirteenth year and thirty-third year memorials of a believer's death.

On each of the individual deities' pages you will see the image of the deity, to the right of which will be the deity's bija, or Sanskrit seed syllable, and the bija's Japanese and Sanskrit pronunciations.

The Thirteen Buddhas are an important part of a traditional Japanese Buddhist funeral service, with each "Buddha" having a corresponding memorial service. The thirteen in Japanese and Sanskrit and the corresponding date of their service after the death are: