Analysis, prediction, and theory: Tomb Raider The Legend of Lara Croft Teaser Trailer

[Flame_Knights]

Originally Posted by Ellioft

With the recently unleashed art works made for the show you can see two statue of a nine tailed fox. Also I do think she's going to travel to India and Nepal why India ? Because it's apparently the source of the Nine Tailed fox myth.

Why is India the source of the nine-tailed fox myth? I never knew this, and I didn’t find any relevant information on the Internet.

[Ellioft]

Originally Posted by Flame_Knights

Why is India the source of the nine-tailed fox myth? I never knew this, and I didn’t find any relevant information on the Internet.

Here's what I have found :

Here is an extract of Chinese Magical Medicine by Michel Strickmann implying the direct connection between the Inari and the Dakini (p. 272).

The “Dakini” or “Dagini” for which this complex of modern Japanese possession-rites is named is, of course, the dakini of older Tantric sources, identified since at least the eighth century with the fox-phantom. As we have noted, the Chinese linking of the voracious and ill-omened dakini-demonesses with the fox was based on their Indian associations with the jackal. In medi*eval Japan, it became customary to identify figures from the complex Indian pantheon of Tantric Buddhism with native deities (rather like the interpret at ioromana in the world of late antiquity). Thus it was natural for this interpretatio nipponica to see in the supernatural fox-dakini the original of Japan’s own Inari, a god of rice cultivation often depicted in vulpine form.

Now why the Dakini. The Dakini is a Tantric Buddhist monster. It appears in the Mahavairocana Tantra and he (the Dakini) is overwhelmed by Mahavairocana Buddha and (s)he rides a jackal. The text is well known in Japan (as Mahavairocana sutra).

Note that the Dakini is present in numerous Indian stories with lots of variants... LOTS of (including sex, appeance, attributes, malvolence). It is also known in Tibetan version. Jackal being unknown in China and Japan, they translated by another small canine fox.

Note also that the Inari appears to be from an old local Japanese tradition, it later been related to fox (around the 12th century) before joining more or then with the Dakini. The Inari also has the particularity to not be well defined, especially if (s)he is male or female. The blur with mysterious Dakini is quite obvious (Hence why be wary of my claim about one version specifically of the Dakini, or to compare too much the Inari and Dakini, or even Dakini and Dakini-Ten).

So the local deity Inari is identified by the Buddhist Indian Dakini to some extend. Here is the Japanese Dakini-ten riding her legendary fox (I pick this one because it is a gorgeous one, notice the small rice sheaf in her hand) (Note also it exists a male version of Dakini-ten, carrying a sword/weapon instead of a sheaf of rice