Hira-san Jirōbō is placed within the tengu hierarchy as the "second-seat great tengu," forming a pair with Atago-san Tarōbō. Both in the forty-eight tengu of the Tengu-kyō^[1] and in the Eight Great Tengu framework that follows from the Muromachi Noh play Kurama Tengu^[3], the order Tarōbō (one) and Jirōbō (two) broadly agrees.

The most reliable medieval source telling of the tengu of Mt. Hira is the Hirasan Kojin Reitaku^[2]. The monk Keisei, who prayed for the recovery of Kujō Michiie, recorded in the first year of Enō (1239) some fifty-odd articles of dialogue exchanged three times over with the aged tengu (the "old man") of Mt. Hira, ranging from the ecology of tengu to the afterlife of the dead and predictions of this world. As a primary historical source that speaks of Hira's tengu by name, it carries decisive weight for the study of Jirōbō.

On the other hand, the tale of the Chinese tengu Chira Eiju, often linked to Jirōbō, calls for care. The story of Chira Eiju in the Konjaku Monogatarishū, Book 20^[4] (the original of the later Zegaibō emaki) runs on the plot of a tengu of Shintan (China) coming to Japan and being thwarted by the ritual power of a monk of Mt. Hiei; the original does not point to Mt. Hira as the seat of the Japanese tengu. To bind Chira Eiju to the tengu of Hira is, rather, an arrangement by later yokai scholarship. Likewise the tale of relocation—that Jirōbō was the lord of Mt. Hiei but moved to Mt. Hira because eminent monks gathered at the Enryaku-ji founded by Saichō—has scant support in medieval primary sources, and is understood as a later narrative arrangement that tells, as a tengu's removal, the handover of a sacred mountain's lordship from mountain spirit to Buddhist law. Chigiri Kōsai^[5] of tengu scholarship, too, places Jirōbō within the system of the many mountains as the great tengu next after Tarōbō.