Vajrapani: The Vajra-Holder Across Buddhist Traditions

By Tim Yu, Founder & Editor · Published 27 October 2026

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Vajrapani (Sanskrit Vajrapāṇi, “vajra in hand”) is not one figure shared by all of Buddhism but a name carried through several of its layers. In two Pali suttas he is a spirit who threatens a silent debater. In Gandharan art he is the Buddha’s companion and guard. In the Mahāyāna sūtras he is a yakṣa lord and bodhisattva, and in Tibetan tantra the usually wrathful “Lord of Secrets.” In Japan he is linked, though scholars disagree, to the Niō who guard temple gates.

Vajrapani at a glance, layer by layer

What the name means

Vajra is the thunderbolt-sceptre and pāṇi the hand. Bhikkhu Sujato renders the Pali form Vajirapāṇī “lightning-bolt in hand”; the Cleveland Museum of Art gives “he who holds (pani) the thunderbolt (vajra).” In Tibetan he is phyag na rdo rje, Chagna Dorje, which Himalayan Art Resources (HAR) renders “the Vajra Holder.” The object itself is covered on our page on the vajra and bell.

The name echoes one of Indra’s. Sujato notes that its synonym Vajrahasta “is a frequent epithet of Indra in the Vedas,” which he takes as confirming the commentary’s identification of the spirit with Sakka; the Pali canon uses the epithet too: the titans live in the ocean, “Defeated by Vajirahattha” (DN 20:12.1).

In the Pali canon: the spirit above the silent debater

Vajirapāṇī appears in two discourses, in the same scene. An opponent is asked a legitimate question and twice says nothing. The Buddha warns that anyone who fails to answer such a question asked three times will have his head split into seven pieces. In the Cūḷasaccaka Sutta (MN 35) the opponent is the debater Saccaka, who holds that form is his self. The Buddha has asked whether he has power over that form, to say “May my form be like this! May it not be like that.” (On the teaching behind the question, see the five aggregates and anatta.)

Asked again, Saccaka answers: “No, worthy Gotama.” In the Ambaṭṭha Sutta (DN 3) the same thing happens to the young brahmin Ambaṭṭha, but there Vajirapāṇī holds “a massive iron spear” (Pali ayokūṭa), not a thunderbolt; our vajra and bell page quotes the passage. The difference is easy to miss: David Fiordalis, introducing 84000’s Tathāgataguhya, has him “brandishing his flaming vajra” over both men, but in the Pali only MN 35 has the vajra.

Three layers need keeping apart. The canon calls him vajirapāṇi yakkho, a powerful non-human being, not a bodhisattva; Sujato’s note points to these two passages, and Fiordalis names the same two suttas. The commentary, as Sujato reports it (we have not read it ourselves), identifies him with Sakka, the Pali name for Indra, king of the gods. The Mahāyāna came later still. In Sujato’s words, “Much later, Mahayana texts adopted the name for a fierce Bodhisattva who was protector of the Dhamma.” In the Pali suttas, which Theravāda holds as scripture, he is a yakkha, not a bodhisattva.

The Buddha’s companion in Gandharan art

In the narrative reliefs of Gandhara, in present-day Pakistan, a vajra-bearing figure keeps appearing at the Buddha’s side. The museums name him and date the pieces:

• The Great Departure (Victoria and Albert Museum, 2nd–4th century): “Behind Siddhartha stands the bearded and curly-haired figure of Vajrapani, holding a large thunderbolt (vajra).”
• Calming the elephant Nalagiri (V&A, Takht-i Bahi, probably mid-2nd century): Vajrapāṇi stands to the Buddha’s left, “holding a thunderbolt in his right hand.” The elephant’s story is on our Devadatta page.
• The Buddha’s death (V&A, 2nd–3rd century): Vajrapāṇi “sprawls beneath the bier striking his head in despair,” in the scene of the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta.
• The first sermon: the Metropolitan Museum holds a ca. 2nd-century schist relief titled Vajrapani Attends the Buddha at His First Sermon.

Another V&A record calls him “the Buddha’s faithful body guard.” The Cleveland Museum of Art traces his look to the Mediterranean: it says his thunderbolt and club “were derived from images of Zeus and Hercules that travelers from the Mediterranean world brought to the region as early as the 320s BC,” and that Gandharan images of him “can combine attributes of Hercules, Zeus, and Hermes.” For how Gandhara came to sculpt the Buddha himself, see what a Buddha statue means.

In the Mahāyāna sūtras: the yakṣa lord who keeps the secrets

One Mahāyāna sūtra makes him, in its translator’s words, “arguably its main protagonist”: the Tathāgataguhya, “The Secrets of the Realized Ones” (Toh 47), translated for 84000 by David Fiordalis and the Dharmachakra Translation Committee. Its first Chinese translation, attributed to Dharmarakṣa, “is said to have been completed in 280 CE.”

In 84000’s summary, the narrative “largely revolves around the figures of Vajrapāṇi, the yakṣa lord and constant companion of the Buddha, and the Buddha himself.” He teaches the secrets of the body, speech and mind of bodhisattvas and buddhas, and the Buddha predicts his future awakening as a buddha. In the sūtra, Fiordalis writes, he is called the Buddha’s “constant companion, eyewitness to his many deeds, and guardian of his secrets.” In one episode Śāriputra sees him standing behind the Buddha and behind Maitreya. In another he sets his vajra on the ground, and Ajātaśatru, Śakra and Maudgalyāyana all fail to lift it. Śakra, the Pali Sakka, appears here as a separate character, so in this sūtra the two are not one figure.

The sūtra calls him “the lord of the guhyakas” (guhyakādhipati), a class of hidden beings, and Fiordalis sees “a play on words in the work between guhya, ‘secret,’ and guhyaka.” In HAR’s account of the sūtra tradition, “the bodhisattva Vajrapani is regarded as one of the Eight Heart-sons of Shakyamuni Buddha and portrayed in a peaceful appearance.” Whether he is a bodhisattva or a buddha, HAR adds, “all depends on whether the depiction is based on the Mahayana Sutras or the Tantras.”

Some popular pages say that in Pure Land Buddhism Vajrapāṇi is known as Mahāsthāmaprāpta. The pages we checked cite no text for it. In Pure Land devotion Mahāsthāmaprāpta is a bodhisattva in his own right (see Amitabha).

”Lord of Secrets”: Vajrapāṇi in the tantras

In the tantras he grows larger. HAR writes that in Vajrayana he “is more typically shown in a wrathful form and known as Guhyapati - ‘the Lord of Secrets,’” and that he is “said to be the main recipient, holder, and protector of all the Tantra texts.” His Tibetan title is gsang bdag phyag na rdo rje, and in tantric practice HAR calls him “a meditational deity, and considered a Buddha.” Chanting the Names of Mañjuśrī, discussed on our Manjushri page, puts its opening request in the mouth of “the master of all secrets, Vajrapāṇi” (verse 16, trans. Ryan Conlon). 84000 counts “no fewer than seven tantras and two dhāraṇī texts” on his Blue-Clad form alone in the Kangyur; for the tantra classes, see Vajrayana.

The title is read in different ways. Wiesiek Mical, introducing 84000’s Bhūtaḍāmara Tantra, argues that guhyakādhipati “refers in the early Kriyā Tantras to Vajrapāṇi’s status as lord of the guhyakas, a class of semidivine beings, and not as the ‘Lord of Mysteries’ as intended in later tantric systems,” and doubts the Tibetan rendering for that text. On his reading the sense shifted over time; HAR’s gloss gives the later sense.

Tamer of spirits: the Bhūtaḍāmara

In the Bhūtaḍāmara Tantra, which 84000 dates to around the seventh or eighth century, Vajrapāṇi as Bhūtaḍāmara, “Tamer of Spirits,” teaches at Śiva’s request. When Śiva challenges him, he uses mantra “to first kill and then revive all the worldly deities and spirits, including Brahmā, Indra, and Śiva himself,” and Śiva pledges fealty. This is a Buddhist tantric narrative and should be read as one. Mical notes that taming worldly spirits “is more often assigned to Vajrapāṇi in his wrathful forms than to any other deity.” He adds that, unlike other early Buddhist tantras on a “subjugation of Śiva,” here “Śiva is never forced into submission,” and a Śaiva version of the tantra, produced between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries, keeps Vajrapāṇi as its teacher.

The Three Lords, not “three protectors”

In Tibetan Buddhism Vajrapāṇi belongs to the rigs gsum mgon po, which Lotsawa House translates “Lords of the Three Families.” In HAR’s account of the Kriyā Tantra system, the buddhas Śākyamuni, Amitābha and Akṣobhya head the Tathāgata, Padma and Vajra families, and one level below them stand Mañjuśrī, Avalokiteśvara and Vajrapāṇi, lord of the Vajra family. A Kriyā mandala text quoted by HAR places him: “In the north is Guhyapati [Vajrapani], blue, the right [hand] holds a vajra to the heart and the left a bell supported at the hip.” (The three families also appear on our page on types of buddhas.)

HAR states that “the Three Lords: Manjushri, Avalokiteshvara and Vajrapani are not protector deities.” The English “protectors” comes from the Tibetan gonpo, which means “lord” but is also used for Mahākāla and other protectors. What each lord stands for depends on the source:

• HAR, the Lower Tantra model: Vajrapāṇi “symbolizes the body of all buddhas” and “represents enlightened activity”; Mañjuśrī represents mind and Avalokiteśvara speech. This is one scheme among several: Mañjuśrī’s own epithets include Vāgīśvara, “Lord of Speech” (see Manjushri).
• Lotsawa House: its series descriptions pair Avalokiteśvara with compassion (“the bodhisattva of compassion”), Mañjuśrī with wisdom (“the Buddha or Bodhisattva of Wisdom”), and Vajrapāṇi with “the power and strength of all the buddhas,” which matches the popular shorthand of compassion, wisdom and power.

How to recognise him: peaceful and wrathful forms

The vajra is the key. HAR calls it “the essential distinguishing characteristic in the recognition of Vajrapani”; the bell is optional. Non-iconic forms, drawn from the sūtra stories, are in HAR’s definition peaceful and “green or blue in colour,” with the vajra in the right hand or on a flower at the right shoulder; some peaceful tantric forms are white. Among tantric forms, “Only a small number of forms are peaceful with the vast majority wrathful in appearance.” HAR calls Krodha (“wrathful”) Vajrapāṇi “the most famous of wrathful figures and the generic model of wrathful deities used in art for all wrathful forms,” and traces the wrathful look itself to “a raksha demon from the island of Lanka as described in the Ramayana and other early Indian literature.” The Blue-Clad form in 84000’s Toh 498 is “dark blue, with one face, three eyes, and two hands,” adorned with eight serpents, “and in his right hand he brandishes a vajra.” Its dhāraṇī in the Tibetan canon addresses him so:

Two cautions. HAR warns that some forms “are identical to the white Vajrasattva,” and in sculpture “sometimes it is almost impossible to know which deity is intended.” And the Cleveland Museum describes Garuḍa, the man-eagle, as “a form occasionally assumed by Vajrapani.” HAR finds his forms popular “in all traditions of Tibetan Buddhism - new and old” (see the four schools).

East Asia: Shukongōshin and the Niō

In Japan the vajra-holder is Shukongōshin, which the JAANUS dictionary of Japanese art glosses as Sanskrit “Vajrapani or Vajradhara”: an armoured guardian holding a vajra. JAANUS dates the clay Shukongōshin in Tōdai-ji’s Hokke-dō to the mid-8th century. The temple keeps it as a secret image of the deity “who wields a vajra and protects people from the enemies of the Buddha,” shown only on 16 December.

The Niō, or Kongō rikishi, are the muscular pair at temple gates, one open-mouthed with a vajra, the other closed-mouthed with a sword. Whether they are Vajrapāṇi is not settled. The link runs through Shukongōshin: JAANUS’s “Niou” entry says the Niō are “iconographically” associated with him, and its “Kongou rikishi” entry says that because the Sanskrit name Vajradhara was rendered into Chinese in several ways, including Shukongōshin, Niō and Kongō rikishi, “scholars consider them the same deity,” though the names Niō and Kongō rikishi refer to the gate pair. The “Niou” entry is more cautious: “there are various opinions as to the identities of the Niou, and none seems to clearly prevail.” Tōdai-ji’s pages on the Great South Gate and the Hokke-dō do not use the name Vajrapāṇi. The temple says the pair at its Great South Gate “are said to have been sculpted in just sixty-nine days under the direction of the sculptors Unkei and Kaikei,” with work begun in the seventh month of 1203 (one JAANUS entry gives 1207). See Buddhism in Japan.

The Cleveland Museum notes that Vajrapāṇi “was incorporated into art of China, Korea, and Japan.” The sources here identify the armoured guardian Weituo of Chinese temples with Skanda, not Vajrapāṇi: the Metropolitan Museum catalogues him as “Skanda (Chinese Weituo),” and Lingyin Temple in Hangzhou, which keeps him at the back of its Hall of Heavenly Kings, calls him “the Skanda Bodhisattva, or Weituo as he is known in Chinese.” Our Laughing Buddha page describes that hall.

His mantra, and where it comes from

Many websites give a short mantra, oṃ vajrapāṇi hūṃ phaṭ, but we could not trace it to a named text or translator. One mantra with a clear source ends the mantra section of the Blue-Clad Vajrapāṇi dhāraṇī (Tōh. 748, Tibetan Kangyur), just before its rituals, in the translation by Samye Translations for Lotsawa House:

oṃ nīlāmbaradhara-vajrapāṇir-ājñāpayati svāhā

The text prescribes reciting it “three, seven, fourteen, twenty-one, or one hundred and eight times” for its rites, most of them protective, and Lotsawa House, summarising Karmavajra’s commentary (Tōh. 2676), describes the dhāraṇī as “at once a powerful protection against, and remedy for, spirits, demons and disease.” That is the ritual tradition’s own account, not medical advice. On mantras more widely, see Buddhist mantras; on empowerment for tantric practice, the vajra and bell page.

For the wider company of these figures, and how each tradition understands them, see buddhas and bodhisattvas.