User:Ainz/Deva Draft

The Deva are a group of twelve Perfect-level Digimon who are followers of the Four Holy Beasts; each one has three Deva assigned to them that also share their attribute.

They are based on the Twelve Heavenly Generals, a group of Hindu, a term in which the group are also referred to collectively as, who were incorporated into as the servants and protectors of the. The term "" itself refers to the plethora of deities and other supernatural beings in which the Twelve Heavenly Generals belong to. In Japan, by the end of the, the generals eventually became conflated with the animals of the in , and so they became representative of those figures. However, as various groupings that associate each of the twelve with different zodiac animals exist, the Deva include elements of two commonly used groupings, both of which are based on the ascending order in which the animals of the zodiac came in during the. The grouping in which the names of the Deva are derived, coupled with their representative animal, is based on the ordering from Kumbhīra to Vikarāla. The grouping in which other design aspects of the Deva are obtained, namely through the Butsuzōzui (佛像圖彙), an illustrated compendium of Buddhist images that was originally published in three volumes in 1690 which categorized and organized deities, is based on the reverse order.

The Deva share many similarities beyond their basis. Nearly all of the Deva have three horns and red eyes, and each wears Chinese-styled armor with a red or purple scarf. Furthermore, each Deva's Special Move is named after one of the twenty-eight mentioned in the , which usually has some relation either to the Deva's zodiac animal or weapon through the meaning or description of that Naraka.

Bīja and weapons
The Deva each have a symbol displayed on them, written in. In a similar manner to the, the Twelve Heavenly Generals were also assimilated into the where they were seen as manifestations of the original Buddhist deities (本地仏, honjibutsu), consisting of a mixture of s and s. Although the honjibutsu and the generals in which they are assigned to are not always consistent, in the case of the Deva, their designations are based on those displayed in the Butsuzōzui. Almost all of the Bīja symbols paired with each general correspond to the ones that are associated with the honjibutsu in which they are assigned to.

Each of the Deva also wields a signature weapon which is named in Chinese, with the form, where "X" is a generic type of weapon. This is a reference to the fact that Yakṣa were the guardian deities of the earth's treasure in Hindu mythology. Although the configuration of the weapons that the Twelve Heavenly Generals wield vary in different media, the ones assigned to the Deva are strongly based on those written in the Butsuzōzui.