Theory: Sukuna was raised by monks
I posted this on Reddit but now I want to share it here!! Also credit to @thepersonperson, your research on Sukuna really helped me with this theory!!
Anyway, it may be odd to think that Sukuna, the literal king of curses, may have been raised by peaceful Buddhist monks, but the more I look into it the more it makes sense. I have 4 reasons why and I’ll put a TL;DR at the end for those that don’t feel like reading.
1. He 100% wasn’t raised by his parents
This is kinda obvious but I do think it’s important to argue here that Sukuna was most likely abandoned right at birth. From the way Sukuna speaks about his mother (at least in the English translation, idk about in the original text) it’s obvious he knows absolutely nothing about her. He speaks about her in a very impersonal way as he most likely never met her. Sukuna also referred to himself as “unwanted” or as “Imigo,” lending further support to him being abandoned very early in life.
So if he was abandoned, probably as an infant, who raised him? Even being strong as Sukuna is, no infant is surviving the Heian era without someone to take care of them.
I believe Sukuna being abandoned and later raised at a Buddhist temple/shrine makes the most sense considering his condition and actual history. In the Nara and early Heian era, Buddhist temples ran Hospices for the Sick and Orphaned. These were places where those with terminal diseases or disabilities could live and abandoned or orphaned children could grow up in (Source! I will be using this one a lot). Sukuna might have ended up at one of these hospices and grew up there. Japanese Buddhist Temples also often dealt with death and funeral rites, so if Sukuna’s parents where intending to “dispose” of him because of his condition, a Buddhist shrine would have been the place to leave him.
2. His personality/ideals
The Vile Eye made a really great video analyzing Sukuna, and explains better than I could about how Sukuna is the “anti-Buddha.” Sukuna’s ideology can be seen in his conversations with Jogo and Kashimo, where he promotes the idea of “detachment” and how he achieved his “enlightenment” (true strength) by detaching from everything in the world in pursuit of this strength. I could go more into Sukuna’s ideology, but basically he follows a “corrupted” version of Buddhism that uses Buddhist ideas to explain Sukuna’s ruthlessness. It would make sense that he got a lot of these ideas about detachment and enlightenment from his time being raised in a Buddhist Temple and then later twisted them to make his own ideology.
Sukuna is also a lot like the Buddha or a bodhisattva in the way he tries to guide others down his path of enlightenment and help them answer their questions, even if he does kill them right after. Sukuna sees this as his form of “compassion,” and is seen several times throughout the series “teaching” others. I believe Sukuna gets this personality trait from the monks who raised him, as he would’ve been raised through a “teacher-student” dynamic and that is now how he responds to those he finds interest in.
We also see that Sukuna is highly educated. Considering that his mother was starving and that he was promptly abandoned, Sukuna certainly wasn’t born a noble and wouldn’t have received a proper education. Unless, he was raised by monks, who then would’ve provided him with an education. I’ve also seen some people say as he gained more power and strength, Sukuna would’ve then gained the means to educated himself and then could imitate the nobility at the time. I think both could be true, as Sukuna may have learned to read and write and about Buddhism from the monks that raised him, and then as he began to grow in power, studied the arts and the habits of the nobility.
3. His Domain v. Yuji’s Domain
This is my favorite reason lol. Sukuna and Yuji have the same CT, yet their domains couldn’t be more different. Yuji’s is just a stroll around the place where he grew up while Sukuna’s is a demon shrine covered in blood and skulls.
But what if they’re not that different? What if Sukuna’s domain ALSO depicts where he grew up?
The shrine in Sukuna’s domain resembles a Buddhist zushi-style shrine (this one specifically), and according to the JJK wiki “the original function of a zushi was as a storage cabinet in a monastery's kitchen, for cooking utensils and ingredients.” Sukuna may have grown up in a monastery and worked in a kitchen that had one of these zushi.
Sukuna’s shrine is corrupted much like how he “corrupted” the Buddhist ideals he was raised with. Instead of being a scared place, Sukuna has turned the shrine that he was raised in into a lair where demons lurk. The shrine’s corrupted appearance could also be from something Sukuna did to the original shrine, perhaps he slaughtered its inhabitants and that’s why his version sits on top a lake of blood.
4. It aligns with actual history
It makes sense that Sukuna would have been abandoned by his parents and that they would have tried to dispose of him because of his appearance. Not many people or groups in the Heian era would have wanted to take him in after due to his deformed appearance, which would have associated him with “pollution” or kegare. Sukuna, in his lifetime and especially before he obtained any kind of power, would have been designated by society as hinin or a “non-human” and this was “a very specific group of social outcasts isolated from the community and cast aside due to disease or deformation” (Source). Birth deformities and illnesses like leprosy were believed by some to be caused by bad karma in past lives or karmic illness, thus these people were “polluted.”
However, hinin and other “defiled” people played important roles for Buddhist temples, so Buddhist monks would have had a reason for taking in and raising a hinin like Sukuna. I’m not gonna go into how kegare affected Heian society (if you do wanna read about it both sources I linked are great or @/thepersonperson’s research), but basically associating at all with death or dead bodies could make you “polluted” and being pollution and the spread of pollution was detrimental to the function of a temple, since you couldn’t really preform rituals and daily tasks while being polluted. The solution was to have already “defiled” people like the hinin handle polluting things like corpses, making them important for the function of purifying pollution in general. As a result, hinin and other outcast became connected to religious institutions as they had somewhat of a symbiotic relationship; hinin served the temple by doing polluting task that only they could do and the temple provided them with shelter (from this source again).
Back to Sukuna, he was probably taken in by monks and made to serve as a “Inujinin” (quoting from one of my sources: this name is result of the word “dog” (inu) added as a prefix to the term for shrine purveyor (jinin)), which were the shrine workers that delt with funerals and the dead. Sukuna being a jinin (read more about that here) makes a lot of sense especially considering his CT, as in his childhood he may have been tasked with preparing food offerings for a shrine (and the Goma kinda resembles his Divine Flames).
1. He was probably abandoned right a birth, so it wasn’t his parents that raised him. It makes sense that they would have left him at a Buddhist temple/shrine and the monks there could have been the ones that raised him.
2. Sukuna’s ideology and the way he acts is like an evil monk or an “anti-Buddha.” He might have gotten these aspects of his personality and the ideas for his ideology from the monks that raised him. Him being raised by monks also explains how he is so educated despite coming from low class parents and being abandoned.
3. Both Sukuna’s and Yuji’s domains depict where they grew up. Sukuna’s domain is the shrine he grew up at but corrupted.
4. Sukuna’s disfigured appearance would have designated him as hinin or “non-human” in Heian society and he would have been treated as an outcast by most people and groups. However, hinin were extremely useful to Buddhist Temples so it’s possible that Sukuna would have been taken in by monks to work for them as a servant.
Thank you anyone who read all of that!!! I’ve been writing a Sukuna backstory so I’ve done a lot of research and I hope it makes sense!! If you guys want me to expand on anything or if I got anything wrong do let me know!
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