More important than these is Kshitigarbha, Ti-tsang or Jizo[66] who in China and Japan ranks second only to Kuan-yin.  Visser has consecrated to him an interesting monograph[67] which shows what strange changes and chances may attend spirits and how ideal figures may alter as century after century they travel from land to land.  We know little about the origin of Kshitigarbha.  The name seems to mean Earth-womb and he has a shadowy counterpart in Akasagarbha, a similar deity of the air, who it seems never had a hold on human hearts.  The Earth is generally personified as a goddess[68] and Kshitigarbha has some slight feminine traits, though on the whole decidedly masculine.  The stories of his previous births relate how he was twice a woman:  in Japan he was identified with the mountain goddess of Kamado, and he helps women in labour, a boon generally accorded by goddesses.  In the pantheon of India he played an inconspicuous part,[69] though reckoned one of the eight great Bodhisattvas, but met with more general esteem in Turkestan, where he began to collect the attributes afterwards defined in the Far East.  It is there that his history and transformations become clear.

He is primarily a deity of the nether world, but like Amitabha and Avalokita he made a vow to help all living creatures and specially to deliver them from hell.  The Taoists pictured hell as divided into ten departments ruled over by as many kings, and Chinese fancy made Ti-tsang the superintendent of these functionaries.  He thus becomes not so much a Saviour as the kindly superintendent of a prison who preaches to the inmates and willingly procures their release.  Then we hear of six Ti-tsangs, corresponding to the six worlds of sentient beings, the gracious spirit being supposed to multiply his personality in order to minister to the wants of all.  He is often represented as a monk, staff in hand and with shaven head.  The origin of this guise is not clear and it perhaps refers to his previous births.  But in the eighth century a monk of Chiu Hua[70] was regarded as an incarnation of Ti-tsang and after death his body was gilded and enshrined as an object of worship.  In later times the Bodhisattva was confused with the incarnation, in the same way as the portly figure of Pu-tai, commonly known as the laughing Buddha, has been substituted for Maitreya in Chinese iconography.

In Japan the cult of the six Jizos became very popular.  They were regarded as the deities of roads[71] and their effigies ultimately superseded the ancient phallic gods of the crossways.  In this martial country the Bodhisattva assumed yet another character as Shogun Jizo, a militant priest riding on horseback[72] and wearing a helmet who became the patron saint of warriors and was even identified with the Japanese war god, Hachiman.  Until the seventeenth century Jizo was worshipped principally by soldiers and priests, but subsequently his cult spread among all classes and in all districts.  His benevolent activities as a guide and saviour were more and more emphasized:  he heals sickness, he lengthens life, he leads to heaven, he saves from hell:  he even suffers as a substitute in hell and is the special protector of the souls of children amid the perils of the underworld.  Though this modern figure of Jizo is wrought with ancient materials, it is in the main a work of Japanese sentiment.