Benzaiten's presence in Japan traces back through Buddhism to Sarasvati, the Hindu goddess of eloquence, learning, music and flowing water, absorbed into the expanding Buddhist pantheon centuries before Buddhism itself reached Japan and carried onward under Sarasvati's name rendered into Japanese. Once established in Japan she was folded further into native practice through honji suijaku, the medieval framework that identified Buddhist deities as the true original ground, honji, behind particular kami, who were read as their local manifestations, suijaku, a pairing that let a single shrine complex like Enoshima's honor Benzaiten within both Buddhist and Shinto ritual frameworks at once rather than forcing a choice between them. She is counted today among the Seven Lucky Gods of Japanese folk religion, the only goddess in that popular grouping, and remains closely associated with water, worshipped at shrines built beside lakes, rivers and the sea, Enoshima's own island shrine chief among them. Her associated qualities span wisdom, commerce and wealth, music and poetry, and rivers and waters, the same cluster carried forward from Sarasvati through this long chain of assimilation and renaming, still visible today in the offerings left at her water side shrines.