불교의 모신(母神) 하리티(Hārītī) 신앙의 형성과 변천 연구

Abstract

Hārītī is one of the representative female deities of Buddhism as a Mother Goddess. Originally, this goddess was a smallpox goddess, who was said to eat children, as one of the several types of the yakṣiṇī that belongs to evil deities in the ethnic indigenous faiths of India. Hārītī appears widely from Nikayas through Mahayana Sutras to Tantra texts, and not only in the three canonical works of sutras, vinayas, and treatises, but also throughout historiographies of Buddhism and travelogues of eminent monks. Although there have been many historical studies on Hārītī in the fields of art history and archeology, nonetheless, there have been few analytical works on the basis of Buddhist texts. This article analyzed comparatively various Buddhist texts on Hārītī, seeking the characteristics of the images and rituals and worship patterns of Hārītī. Among the images of Hārītī, the figure of loving mother holding her baby is predominant in its history of art, although we can sometimes find Hārītī in the figure of archetypical ogress similar to the Hindu Goddess Kali. This shows the coexistence of the Buddhist appropriation of the Hārītī faith and its traditional worship forms. On the other hand, the image of Hārītī in Buddhist scriptures shows her as a novice, sotāpanna in the first saintly status, or loving mother with her maternity in emphasis. In Mahayana sutras, she is portrayed mainly as the guardian deity of believers in sutras, the Lotus Sutra being its representative text. The Hārītī faith can be divided into daily rituals in temples and householders’ private worship. In Pali texts, the offering of food to Hārītī takes place in householders’ homes, while the offering is described to take place in temples according to standardized format in the Sarvāstivāda texts, which even include the recordings of the sacrifices for the son of Hārītī. Householders’ worship of Hārītī had diverse goals, including the treatment of epidemics, getting a child, and comfortable childbirth, the abundance of material goods. The widest circulation of the faith, however, took place in the Tantra tradition. Especially, the Hārītī tantra shows the typical characteristics of Yakṣiṇī Sadhana. From this, the Hārītī tantra might be appraised to be a variant of the Hārītī faith as well as the synthesis of it and its archetypical and traditional Yakṣiṇī faith. These facts might be thought to show the vitality of the Hārītī faith together with its geographically wide circulation for a long time.