18th Century Qing Dynasty Chicken Blood Stone Carving Image height sixteen point five cm

Patrick -Huth Jackson Collection Longri Compilation

Welcome to Jialan Bodhisattva's Christmas

          Jialan is the general name of the temple; "Galactic God", in a narrow sense, refers to the guardian god of the Galactic land; Broadly speaking, it refers to all the good gods who support Buddhism. According to the "Seven Buddhas and Eight Bodhisattvas Dharani Mantra Sutra", there are 18 people who protect the monk Kalan. Later, the three meritorious officials of Zhiyuan Jingshe, the king of Shewei, King Persina, Prince Zhituo, and the lonely elders were also included in the list of the holy people of Jialan, increasing the number of holy people of Jialan to 21, because they donated "only trees to the lonely garden" to Sakyamuni Buddha. In the early temples, the Kalan Bodhisattva was usually represented by the lonely elders, the Prince Zhituo and the King Persina.

          In Chinese Buddhism, Guan Yu, the great general of Shu Han during the Three Kingdoms period, is regarded as the representative of the Kalan God, and the birthday of Guan Yu on the 13th day of the fifth lunar month is regarded as the Christmas of the Kalan Bodhisattva. It is said that the founder of Tiantai Sect in the Sui Dynasty was a wise master who once settled in Yuquan Mountain in Jingzhou; Dingzhong once saw the Emperor Guan show his spirit, and led his relatives of ghosts and gods to show all kinds of terrible scenes to disturb the wise. After the enlightenment of the wise master, Emperor Guan asked the wise man to teach him five precepts, so he became a formal Buddhist disciple and vowed to be a Dharma Protector of Buddhism. Since then, this hero who has been highly respected by Chinese people for more than a thousand years has become the Dharma Protector of Buddhist temples.