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History

Early Buddhist monks did not doubt the existence of kami but saw them as inferior to their buddhas. Hindu deities had had the same reception: They were thought of as non-illuminated and prisoners of saṃsāra. Buddhist claims of superiority, however, encountered resistance; monks tried to overcome it by deliberately integrating kami in their system. Japanese Buddhists themselves wanted to somehow give the kami equal status. Several strategies to do this were developed and employed, and one of them was the honji suijaku theory.