Yanluo Wang is a deity in Chinese religion and Taoism, and the ruler of Diyu, the underworld. The name Yanluo is a shortened Chinese transliteration of the Sanskrit term Yamarāja. He is also the judge of the underworld and passes judgment on all the dead. According to legend, he is often equated with Yama from Buddhism, but actually, Yanluo Wang has his own number of stories and long been worshiped in China. His personification is always male, and his minions include a judge who holds in his hands a brush and a book listing every soul and the allotted death date for every life. Bullhead and Horseface, the fearsome guardians of hell, bring the newly dead, one by one, before Yanluo for judgement. Men or women with merit will be rewarded good future lives, or even revival in their previous life. Men or women who committed misdeeds will be sentenced to torture and/or miserable future lives. Yanluo is not one particular god. There were said to be cases in which an honest mortal was rewarded the post of Yanluo.
Drawing from various Indian texts and local culture, the Chinese tradition proposes several versions concerning the number of hells and deities who are at their head. It seems that originally there were two competing versions: 136 hells or 18 hells, each of them being led by a subordinate king of Yanluo Wang. They were strongly challenged from the Tang dynasty by a new version influenced by Taoism, which adopted Yanluo Wang to make it the fifth of a set of ten kings each named at the head of a hell by the Jade Emperor. The other nine kings are: Qinguangwang, Chujiangwang, Songdiwang, Wuguanwang, Kachengwang, Taishanwang, Pingdengwang Dushiwang Zhuanlunwang, typically Taoist names. They compete with Heidi, another Taoist god of the world of the dead. Yanluo Wang remains nevertheless the most famous, and by far the most present in the iconography. However, then it disappears completely from the list, giving way to a historical figure, a magistrate appointed during his lifetime as judge of the dead by a superior deity. This magistrate is most often Bao Zheng, a famous judge who lived during the Song dynasty. Sometimes he is accompanied by three assistants named "Old Age", "Illness" and "Death".
Variable identity
In the syncretistic and non-verbal world of Chinese religion, Yanluo Wang's interpretation can vary greatly from person to person. While some recognize him as a Buddhist deity, others regard him as a Taoist deity in competition with Bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha. Generally seen as a frightening deity, he can also present the more reassuring image of a righteous and just judge or advocate of dharma.
