mythical protector beast of Chinese legend
Bai Ze
Bai Ze is a mythical creature from ancient Chinese legend, known in Japan as hakutaku. It was believed to know everything about ghosts and spirits, and its image was used for centuries as a charm against evil.
The myth
According to the legend, Bai Ze appeared to the Yellow Emperor, Huang Di, while he travelled along the Eastern Sea. The creature dictated to him a guide to the forms and habits of the 11,520 kinds of supernatural beings in the world and how to overcome their enchantments and attacks. The Emperor recorded this knowledge in a book called the Bái Zé Tú, or Diagrams of Bai Ze. The original work is lost, but fragments survive in other texts, and the only surviving evidence is a Dunhuang manuscript from the 9th or 10th century, titled Bai Ze Diagrams of Spectral Prodigies. Its title refers to drawings of monsters rather than of Bai Ze itself.
In Japan the hakutaku is described in several ways: a bovine or feline creature with nine eyes and six horns, with a human-like face, or with a lion's body and eight eyes. The number of eyes varies by interpretation, and it is sometimes shown with a single eye at the centre of its head. It is considered intelligent and able to understand human speech. One legend says that on Mount Tateyama it foretold a deadly plague and asked that its image be used as a talisman, and since then it has been revered as a guardian spirit of herbal medicine.
Worship and religion
Keeping an image of Bai Ze at home to guard against spirits is recorded in China from the 9th century, and in Japan its picture was hung at entrance gates or kept inside houses. During the 1858 cholera epidemic in Edo, people were advised to place its image on their pillows before sleeping.
Legacy
Toriyama Sekien included it in his Gazu Hyakki Yagyō Shūi (Supplement to the Hundred Demons of Past and Present), the third volume of the series that began with Gazu Hyakki Yagyō. The benevolent monster that eats nightmares is often associated with the Japanese baku. D. T. Suzuki described it in Zen and Japanese Culture. The Pokémon Absol may be based on Bai Ze.
Ancient sources: The oldest known depiction appears in the Tiandi ruixiang zhi (Treatise on the Auspicious Signs of Heaven and Earth), a work believed to have come to Japan from China. The Bái Zé Tú is also cited in Chinese records from the Six Dynasties period onward.