85992
I was reading a manga and came along this text on the pillar:

[![？？爰大施餓鬼](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kYhpV.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kYhpV.jpg)

I deciphered this: 〇〇爰大施餓鬼会

I can't find anything in that. I looked up various 大施餓鬼(おせがき) related
articles, but those two kanji were nowhere to be found. They are written in
really hard handwriting and I can't read them.

I couldn't find the 爰 either and I may have confused it with 妥 or another one,
but the kanji looks more like 爰 than anything else.

After some more searching, I found also a photo of such pillar on Google:
[![本物の施餓鬼柱](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4pwc3.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4pwc3.jpg)

After even more asking around, I found it is some kind of Buddhist Sanskrit
signs of Zodiac or something like that, but I still don't know which sign it
is exactly.

![Buddha Zodiac](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VBdPn.gif)

After asking a bit more I got told "You have to ask a monk!"; so I found a
monk talking about gravestones and Sanskrit on them
[here](https://sotouba.net/?mode=f19#s03) and tldr: It says that it means
something about annual event and that it means whatever the requestor had in
mind without any strict rules to be followed. At least it's what I understood
from his long post on his site

I might've misread something there, so I won't put it as solved yet.
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2021-04-06T10:01:13.583
85989
2021-04-06T12:51:52.420
2021-04-06T12:51:52.420
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question
kanji handwriting
What are those kanji on a 大施餓鬼柱 pillar?
Those are the bonji. They are sound vibrations used in meditation. In
Japanese, they typically are germ characters, which are characters that
germinate other words, like a seed. In this context, it is likely to germinate
names of deities, and one or more of their various aspects are being invoked
by these sounds, that is to say, "whatever the requester had in mind without
any strict rules" as the OP states.
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2021-04-06T12:49:10.997
85992
2021-04-06T12:49:10.997
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answer