Yanluo Wang

The detail that makes this system Chinese rather than Indian is that he is fifth. A supreme god of death who is nonetheless the fifth of ten judges, reporting upward to a mountain's ministry and downward to clerks, is a bureaucracy's idea of death — appealable, documented, and staffed. The registry held the Buddhist and Hindu Yama and not the Chinese magistrate, which is the same shape of omission this programme found with Oshosi and the Cuban Ochosi, running the other way.

Domains

• death
• judgment

Relations

• subordinate to: Dongyue DadiThe summonses come down from the Eastern Peak; the judging happens here.Reference treatment of Dongyue Dadi as leader of the celestial ministry maintaining the Book of Life, the register of the dates on which souls must be summoned before the Judges of Hell. (secondary)
• counterpart of: YamaThe same office at the other end of a transmission. Recorded as a counterpart rather than merged, because the Chinese magistrate of the fifth court in a ten-court bureaucracy is not the Buddhist Yama and is still less the Vedic one.Reference treatment of the Chinese hell as principally a Buddhist concept modified by Daoism and indigenous folk belief, and of Yanluo Wang's name as the Chinese form of Yama. (secondary)
• companion: Qinguang WangThe first king of the ten; this is the fifth.Reference treatment of the Ten Kings of Hell, who preside over fixed regions where the dead are punished. (secondary)

Sources

• Yanluo Wang is the god of death and ruler of Diyu, fifth of the Ten Kings of Hell, presiding from Youdu, whose name is the Chinese form of Yama.: Reference treatments of Yanluo Wang, Diyu and the Ten Kings. (secondary)