page_title: Ganesha in world religions
section_title: Kangi figures
hierarchical_section_title: Ganesha in world religions / Buddhism / Shingon Buddhism / Kangi figures
caption_attribution_description: What is Ganesh doing at a Buddhist temple?
context_page_description: India and Hinduism has influenced many countries of East Asia and the Indian Subcontinent as a result of commercial and cultural contacts. Ganesha is one of many Hindu deities who reached foreign lands as a result. The worship of Ganesha by Hindus outside of New Era India shows that the religion is ancient and followed worldwide. Infact, Hindu was coined recently as religion but it was used to be called "Sanatana Dharma". The acceptance of Hindu ideas in ancient times still continue today in world religions. You dig anywhere on this planet, one can find Indian god's idols show that the "Sanatana Dharma" was everywhere few thousands years back.
  Ganesha was a deity particularly worshipped by traders and merchants, who went out of India for commercial ventures. The period from approximately the tenth century onwards was marked by the development of new networks of exchange, the formation of trade guilds, and a resurgence of money circulation, and it was during this time that Ganesha became the principal deity associated with traders. The earliest inscription where Ganesha is invoked before any other deity is by the merchant community.
context_section_description: There are more than thirty distinguishable forms of Ganesha in the Japanese iconographic tradition. 
  There are several dual forms.  The most typical dual form is the Embracing Kangi.  In this form two tall figures with elephant heads and  human bodies, male and female, stand in embrace. A new concept of Vinayaka couple both elephant-headed – a unique development in the religious history of Japan. The concept of this twin form of Ganesha (with Ganeshani) could not develop in India. There are at least three variant types of Embracing Kangi figures.  Orthodox Shingon Buddhism interprets the details of all three types as sophisticated allegorical symbols.  Sanford believes that these orthodox Shingon interpretations, of considerable eventual importance in Japanese worship of Ganesha, developed during the Heian period in an attempt to legitimize Ganesha as a figure in Japanese Buddhism.
caption: Ganesha in a Japanese temple.
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