What is "karura"

The is a divine creature with human torso and birdlike head in Japanese Hindu-Buddhist mythology.

The name is a transliteration of Garuda ( Sanskrit: गरुड ; Pāli: ) a race of enoromously gigantic birds in Hinduism, upon which the Japanese Buddhist version is based. The same creature may go by the name of .

The karura is said to be enormous, fire-breathing, and to feed on dragons/serpents, just as Garuda is the bane of Nāgas. Only a dragon who possesses a Buddhist talisman, or one who has converted to the Buddhist teaching, can escape unharmed from the Karura. Shumisen or Mount Meru is said to be its habitat.

Karura is one of the proselytized and converted creatures recruited to form a guardian unit called the .

One famous example is the karura statue at Kōfukuji temple, Nara (amongst the eight deva statues presented at dated to the year Tenpyō 6 or 734 AD, pictured top right). This karura is depicted as wearing Chinese Tang dynasty style armor, and thus is seen wingless.

But more conventionally, the karura (garuda) is depicted as a winged being with human torso and avian head, as in the Vajra Hall section of the Womb Realm mandala and other iconographic books and scrolls.