Sk: Hayagriva. Also called Batō Myōō 馬頭明王. The Horse-headed *Kannon 観音 in an angry, funnu 忿怒, form. He is also considered to be the angry form of the Buddha Muryōju 無量寿. One of the *Roku Kannon 六観音, who saves those in the realm of animals, and also one of the hachidai myōō 八大明王 (see *myōō 明王). He is distinguished by the white horse's head that he wears like a crown. The horse is one of the symbols of dominion of the Ideal king, Kyōryō rinjin 教令輪身 (or Kyōryō jōō 教令聖王; Sk: Chakravartin). There are many different forms of Batō having one to three faces and two to eight arms, and he holds different attributes in different images. In the Kannon Section of the *Taizōkai mandara 胎蔵界曼荼羅, he has three faces and two arms, is red in color, and makes the konpon-in 根本印 gesture in front of his chest. However, in art forms with three faces and eight arms are most common. The cult of Batō appears not to have been as popular as those of the other esoteric Kannon, although it is recorded that an image of Batō was enshrined in Saidaiji 西大寺 (late 8th century), Nara. Batō is sometimes found in sets of the Roku Kannon, but independent images dating from the Heian period are rare. Well-known examples dating from the Kamakura and Muromachi periods include the standing statues in Kanzeonji 観世音寺, Fukuoka Prefecture, and Jōruriji 浄瑠璃寺, Kyoto, as well as the painted image of seated Batō in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In the Edo period, Batō came to be worshipped as a protector of horses due to his iconography and his role as savior of those in the realm of animals. Many remaining stone statues *sekibutsu 石仏 of Batō were once set in place to protect travelers and their horses from injury on dangerous paths. It is also thought that Batō became conflated with a folk horse deity believed to be the vehicle of a deity *kami 神, who rides between this world and the sacred realm. Because of this identification, he became the protector of horses and the Buddhist counterpart *honjibutsu 本地仏 of deities of common komagata 駒形 (horse-shaped) shrines, which are found all over Japan.