Hall of Four Heavenly Kings
The Hall of Four Heavenly Kings is a building in East Asian Buddhist temples and the first important hall inside a shanmen in most Chinese and Korean Buddhist temples as well as temples in the Japanese Ōbaku Zen tradition. It is typically named due to the Four Heavenly Kings statues enshrined in the hall. In Chinese Buddhist temples, they are usually termed the Tianwang dian or Tianwang Hall. In Japanese Buddhist temples, they are usually termed the Tennō-den. In Korean Buddhist temples, they are usually termed the Cheonwangmun.
China
Traditionally, the Hall of Four Heavenly Kings is built with the entrance facing north, and located before the Mahavira Hall. In the typical layout of a Hall of Four Heavenly Kings, the historical monk Budai, commonly regarded as an emanation of Maitreya Buddha, is enshrined at the front entry of the Hall of Four Heavenly Kings, with a statue of Skanda Bodhisattva behind him facing the back entry. Statues of the Four Heavenly Kings are usually enshrined at the four corners of the hall.In Buddhism, the Maitreya Buddha, also the future Buddha is Sakyamuni's successor. In the history of Chinese Buddhism, Maitreya Buddha has the handsome image in which he wears a coronet on his head and yingluo on his body and his hands pose in mudras. According to , in the Later Liang Dynasty, Budai was a big-stomached monk named "Qici" in Fenghua of Mingzhou. Carrying a sack on his shoulder, he always begged in the markets and streets, laughing. So local people called him "The Sack Monk". When he reached his Parinirvana, he left a Buddhist Gatha: "Maitreya, the true Maitreya, has thousands of hundreds of millions of manifestations, often instructing people of their time, even when they themselves do not recognize him." So he was seen as the manifestation of Maitreya Buddha. Since then, in Chinese Buddhist temples, Maitreya statues were shaped into a big fat monk's image with a big head and ears, laughing with his upper body exposed and cross-legged.
Skanda Bodhisattva is the dharmapala in charge of protecting Buddhist temples and scriptures. His image is typically depicted as a handsome ancient Chinese general who wearing armors, and wielding a vajra pestle. A few common poses he is depicted in include holding up the vajra pestle and leaning it on his shoulder with one hand while the other hand is held up in a mudra, leaning one end of the vajra pestle on the ground and gripping the other end with one hand while the other hand rests at his waist, and clasping both his hands together in a gesture of respect before his chest while the vajra pestle rests horizontally across his arms.
The statues of the Four Heavenly Kings are enshrined around the four corners on the left and right sides of the Hall of Four Heavenly Kings. There are the eastern Dhṛtarāṣṭra, the southern Virūḍhaka, the western Virūpākṣa, and the northern Vaiśravaṇa. The Four Heavenly Kings are said to live in Mount Meru and their task is to protect the world in their direction respectively.