The 3-year-old "Little Nezha" became the male protagonist of a 7 billion box office movie, but he was originally a burly man

Recently, "Nezha 2: The Devil Boy Conquers the Dragon King" is being broadcast in major theaters. According to real-time data from Lighthouse Professional Edition, as of 15:00 on February 8, the box office of the film has exceeded 7 billion. With the popularity of this movie, the classic character of Nezha has once again become the focus of public discussion.

When people mention Nezha, they will think of the young hero with a bun, a circle of heaven and earth in his hand, and wind-fire wheels under his feet. But Nezha's image and identity are not static. The Nezha that people know today is very different from his original image.

The top one is a statue of Prince Nezha from the Tang Dynasty; the bottom one is Lin Tinggui’s “Five Hundred Arhats - Worshiping the Buddha Hall” from the Song Dynasty. The man with his hands supporting his feet is Nezha.

The stone relic casket unearthed from the Chaoyang North Tower shows the Prince Nezha and the Dragon King He Xiuji. The stone relic casket shows Nezha commanding the Yaksha to make trouble in the sea and slay the dragon.

The above images are the images of Nezha that appeared in cultural relics and books before the Yuan Dynasty. He is either a demon boy who is the reincarnation of a spirit pearl, or a burly man who is fully armed and wearing a helmet and armor. From the guardian deity of Buddhism to the demon boy who is the reincarnation of a spirit pearl, how did the image of Nezha evolve step by step? At the intersection of traditional Chinese classics and folk beliefs, what cultural significance does he carry?

Dharma Protector

Nezha was introduced to the Chinese religious world during the Tang Dynasty along with Tantric Buddhism . The Amoghavajra Sutra translated by Bodhiruci during the Wu Zetian period mentioned the Yaksha general " Nezha Kubala ", which was the real name of Prince Nezha. "Yaksha" is Yaksha, and the patrolling Yaksha in "Nezha Conquers the Dragon King" can be regarded as Nezha's original incarnation.

However, when it comes to "Yaksha", we have to talk about the head of the Yakshas in Buddhist mythology - Vaisravana, the king of the north , who is also the prototype of the later Heavenly King Li Jing. The father-son relationship between Nezha and Li Jing Li Tianwang also originated from the father-son relationship between Vaisravana and Prince Nezha in the Buddhist scriptures. In the "Visravana Ritual", translated by Amoghavajra, one of the "Three Great Masters of Kaiyuan", the family affairs of Vaisravana and his son were mentioned:

The second son of the Heavenly King, Du Jian, often led the Heavenly Soldiers to protect his country's borders. The third son of the Heavenly King, Prince Nezha, often followed the Heavenly King holding a pagoda.

The "Tang version of Nezha Prince" in the "Taisho Tripitaka: Image" depicts Nezha holding a pagoda for his father, King Vaisravana. Vaisravana was widely worshipped and revered in the Tang Dynasty. In the "Poetic Stories of Tang Tripitaka's Journey to the West", the predecessor story of "Journey to the West", "Vaisravana Brahma" was the main guardian deity on the journey of Tripitaka. Nezha, the third prince of Vaisravana, inherited his father's career and became a guardian deity.

The "Buddha's Most Secret Narada Sutra" translated by Faxian in the Song Dynasty is the most important Tantric scripture about the guardian Nezha. ("Nara" should be the transliteration of "Nada" in the northwestern dialect of the Tang and Song dynasties.) The beginning of this sutra records that the Buddha gathered all the gods in the palace of Vaisravana to preach. After listing all the gods, immortals and Buddhas, Narada appeared in front of the audience:

At that time there was a deity named Nāra, with a wonderful appearance and a smiling face. He held the sun, the moon and various instruments in his hands. He was adorned with various treasures and his light surpassed the sun and the moon. He had two dragons, Nanda and Upananda, as his armpit cords, and a Tathagata dragon as a waist belt. He had great power like Narayana, and he also came to the assembly and sat before the Buddha.

The sutra describes Nāṇa as using a dragon as a " waist belt ",** which may be the adapted source of the story in Journey to the West that Nezha had to "catch a dragon to extract its tendons for a belt" three days after his birth, and in Investiture of the Gods, Nezha killed Ao Bing, the third prince of the Dragon King, and " made a dragon tendon belt for my father to wear as armor ".

In addition, more importantly, the sutra says that Narayana "has great power like Narayana". Narayana, also known as Narayana Vajra, is most commonly seen as the "Ha" of the two generals Heng and Ha at the gate of a temple. He is a strong man with tendons all over his body, and there is a dragon lingering on his body. This kind of Narayana is not at all similar to the little Nezha who later wore a red bellyband.

Narayana

Young boy

The image of Nezha as a boy is not a mindless modification, but has its own origins in Buddhist literature. The painting "Respecting the Buddha Hall" by Lin Tinggui of the Southern Song Dynasty at the beginning of the article reflects a famous story of Daoxuan, a famous monk in the Tang Dynasty.

In the "Kai Tian Chuan Xin Ji" written by Zheng Xing in the late Tang Dynasty, it is said:

Xuanlü was very diligent. He often walked at night and fell down the stairs. Suddenly, he felt someone holding his feet . Xuanlü looked back and saw that it was a young man. Xuanlü asked immediately, "Who are you, disciple? Why are you here in the middle of the night?" The young man said, "I am not an ordinary person. I am Prince Nāga, the son of King Biśa. As a Dharma protector, I have been supporting you for a long time." Xuanlü said, "I have nothing to do in my practice. I would like to trouble you, Prince. If there is anything in the Western Regions that can be used for Buddhist purposes, I would like you to bring it to me." The prince said, "I have a tooth of the Buddha. Although it has been a treasure for a long time, I still want to give it away. I dare not not offer it to you." Xuanlü asked for it. It was the tooth of the Buddha in Chongsheng Temple today.

This story was widely circulated in the Tang Dynasty. It was not only included in the "Song Gaoseng Zhuan Daoxuan", but also in the "Pilgrimage to Tang Dynasty to Seek Dharma" written by the Japanese monk Enchin who visited Tang Dynasty in the mid-ninth century. He recorded his visit to the Tang Dynasty in February of the first year of Huichang (841) to pay homage to the Buddha's tooth in Chang'an, and also mentioned the incident of Nezha giving the Buddha's tooth to Daoxuan.

Later researchers often took the story in Kaitian Chuanxinji as the origin of the image of the boy Nezha , but judging from the Buddhist paintings of Lin Tinggui in the Southern Song Dynasty, the person holding the monk's feet in the painting is still an adult. It seems that in the minds of the people of the Tang and Song dynasties, Nezha, a guardian deity with great supernatural powers, should not be portrayed as a child . The image of Nezha as a young boy has an earlier origin.

Lin Tinggui, Southern Song Dynasty, "Five Hundred Arhats - Worshiping the Buddha Hall"

The guardian Nezha mainly comes from Tantric literature, but in Buddhist stories before Tantric Buddhism became popular in Han China, Nezha was portrayed as a newborn baby. The first volume of the "Buddha's Original Life Sutra" translated by Tan Wuchen of Northern Liang during the Southern and Northern Dynasties describes the festive scene of the Buddha's birth in the palace of King Suddhodana:

When the king of heaven Vaisravana gave birth to Narajapa, all the gods were delighted. The king has given birth to a prince, and all the people of Kapilavastu are also delighted.

The Nalakuvara in the sutra is another translation of Nezha's name . This passage in the "Buddha's Life" describes that King Suddhodana worshipped the gods and worshipped the heavens ten days after the Buddha was born. The sutra compares this to the joy of Nalakuvara's birth in heaven. Both are newborns. "Journey to the West" says that Prince Nezha was born "three days after he went to the sea to purify himself and caused trouble", causing the father and son to turn against each other. He is also a newborn, which is very similar to the image of Nalakuvara in the "Buddha's Life".

In addition, the Sanskrit origin of Nezha's name can also reveal some clues about the image of an infant. In many Buddhist texts, Nezha 's name has different translations. The original form in ancient Indian documents is Nalakūvara or Naḍakūbara. The pronunciation of the Chinese Middle Ages sound "那" is the same as na, "吒" is pronounced as ʈa, and "罗" is pronounced as la. The difference between "吒" and "罗" comes from the difference between different language variants such as Indian Sanskrit and Pali. When the ḍ in early Sanskrit appears between two vowels, it will weaken to the Pali l. By identifying the etymology, we can understand that the many forms of Nezha's name in Chinese Buddhist scriptures are all based on one source.

In ancient Indian mythology, Naḍakūbara was originally the son of Kubera, the god of wealth and the guardian of the north. His image is closely related to the great Hindu god Krishna. Krishna often appears in ancient Indian mythology as a young shepherd boy playing the flute, and the derivative of Naḍa, Naḍam, refers to a kind of reed in Sanskrit, which may be the source of the flute vena played by Krishna. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna subdued the Naga snake Kaliya, which is very similar to Nezha subduing the dragon, because after Naga was introduced to China with Buddhism, it was translated as "dragon" and "dragon king".

Hindu God Krishna Source: Wikipedia

The Taisho Tripitaka contains ten volumes of the Sanskrit Translation compiled by Liang Baochang of the Southern Dynasty, in which the meaning of the name "Narukuva" is explained as "cute ". This should be translated from another derivative of Naḍa, naḍaha, or the meaning of the lower part of the name, kūvara. Both words have the meaning of "beautiful, cute" in Sanskrit. These meanings are commonly used by humans to describe infants and young children , which is far from the image of a strong man.

The image of Nezha as a boy also has some suspicious existence in some Tantric scriptures. There is a book suspected to be a translation of the Tang Dynasty by Bukong, "The Rituals of the Northern Heavenly King Vaisravana and the Guardian of the Army" . At the beginning, Prince Nezha claims to be "the grandson of the third prince of the Northern Heavenly King Vaisravana, the second son", which is different from the general Buddhist scriptures. This may be to fit the image of a young boy.

In the portrait of Vaisravana discovered in Dunhuang in the Later Jin Dynasty, the image of Vaisravana and his family appeared. Vaisravana is standing on the earth, and on the left side of the picture should be his wife Jixiangtian, and on the right side, the one wearing a tiger skin should be the second prince Dujian, and on the upper right, there is a yaksha holding a child in one hand, which is probably the newborn Narajuva, that is, the third prince Nezha. This may be the earliest image of the boy Nezha .

The Bishamon Tensei Seal was carved by Cao Yuanzhong in the fourth year of Kaiyun in the Jin Dynasty of the Five Dynasties

Evil Child, Devil Child

When the first part of "Nezha the Devil Boy" was released, many viewers were not used to the image of Nezha as a gangster.

However, the image of Nezha as a bad boy has a long history . Su Che of the Northern Song Dynasty wrote a poem called "Nezha":

The Northern Heavenly King had a mad son who only knew to worship Buddha and not his father.

The Buddha knew that his father was foolish and difficult to teach, so he asked the father to hold up the pagoda with his left hand.

When the child sees the Buddha's head, he bows down, which is somewhat similar to the way he bows down to his father.

A Buddha like Udumbara is hard to come by. Those who see him and hear his teachings are freed from birth, rebirth and death.

Alas, why are you alone like this? The consequences of your karma are already determined and cannot be erased.

Thousands of years have passed since the Buddha's death, and his only presence is in the boats on the rivers and lakes.

The plot of the "madman" in the poem is the source of the flashback story in Journey to the West, in which the Buddha gave Li Tianwang the relic and the golden pagoda, allowing Nezha to regard Buddha as his father. Filial piety is the first priority in traditional culture, and a son not worshipping his father is considered a great rebellion. This evil behavior gradually replaced the image of the guardian god in the Nezha story after the Song Dynasty.

"Evil Nezha" and "cruel Nezha" are almost exclusive words to describe evil people in Yuan opera. For example, Guan Hanqing's "Lu Zhai Lang" says: "I have been unlucky for many years. I ran into that evil Nezha and was frightened like a headless goose or a centipede on the hot ground." Another example is Yang Xianzhi's "Zheng Kongmu Fengxue Kuhanting": "You, the disciple without reason, are just like the evil Nezha."

How could Nezha, who was originally a well-behaved boy serving the eminent monk, become a bad boy?

This may be due to the image of Nezha in the Tantric Buddhist images, where most of the Buddhist paintings are depicted as angry and terrifying . **The three heads and six arms of Nezha in the cartoon are very common in Tantric paintings. **In the "Nara Sutra" translated by Faxian, the image of Nara even has sixteen arms. In the poem "Sending Tea to Wei Chushi in Nankang" by Yun'an Zhenjing Zen Master of the Northern Song Dynasty, it says:

Not only the benevolent Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, not only the angry and evil Nezha. Sometimes they have human heads and ghost faces, sometimes they have tigers, leopards, dragons and snakes.

The "evil Nezha" in the poem obviously corresponds to a certain image in a picture. In addition, in the "Rituals of the Northern Vaisravana King's Guardian of the Army" falsely attributed to Bukong, it says "At that time, Prince Nezha held a halberd in his hand and looked around with evil eyes." This is also closely related to the image of "evil Nezha".

The so-called "worship Buddha but not father" should also be a transformation from the depiction of father and son in the same frame in Buddhist paintings, but the son does not worship the father . In the Confucian tradition, there is a clear distinction between the old and the young, and one must bow when accepting things from the elders. There is a story about Kong Rong's two sons in "Shishuo Xinyu":

The older one was six years old, the younger one was five. During the day, when his father was sleeping, the younger one stole wine from the bedside and drank it. The older one asked, "Why don't you bow?" The older one replied, "I stole it, so how can I bow?"

According to the Book of Rites, "When serving wine to an elder, one should stand up and bow to receive the wine." When receiving a gift from an elder, one should bow and perform etiquette. In Shishuo, stealing wine without bowing is not in accordance with etiquette, but because he is a child, it makes him look cute. As mentioned above, the Tang version of Nezha Prince holds a pagoda in his hand, which was originally the treasure of his father, Vaisravana, but Nezha in the Buddhist painting does not bow to the king of heaven. This does not have any special meaning, but in the context of Chinese culture, it gradually became an unusual father-son relationship. This may also be a new extension change after the image of "evil Nezha" was formed.

It is also worth mentioning that the term "evil Nezha" is still preserved in today's folk culture. In Southwestern Mandarin, such as in Guizhou, the word "Nezha" means a hooligan or a gangster. The director of "Nezha the Devil" is from Sichuan, and I wonder if he was also influenced by the dialect when he was creating the film.

Rebuilding the body

The story of Nezha has been basically finalized in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties' "The Origin of the Three Religions". His father is Li Jing, the Heavenly King of the Pagoda, his eldest brother Jinzha, and his second brother Muzha, and the whole family is well equipped. Because he killed the son of Laolong and Shiji Niangniang (Shiji), the leaders of the demons came to punish him. Nezha "cut bones and carved flesh" to return to his father. Because the Buddha still needs Nezha to subdue demons, he uses " lotus water chestnuts as bones, lotus roots as flesh, ties as shins, and leaves as clothes " to reshape his body. This story has been basically used in film and television works from "Journey to the West" and "Investiture of the Gods" to the present.

The Complete Collection of Three Religions and Gods

In earlier Song Dynasty Zen sayings, the story of Nezha was often used as a topic of conversation. For example, in Volume 25 of the Northern Song Dynasty's "Jingde Chuandeng Lu", it is said: Prince Nezha gave his flesh to his mother and his bones to his father, and then preached to his parents on the lotus.

There is a similar statement in the "Ancient Venerable Sayings": Nazha gave his bones to his father and his flesh to his mother. What is Nazha's original body?

But this story was also created by the Song people . The Northern Song Dynasty Zen dictionary "Zu Ting Shi Yuan" said: "In the monasteries, there is a saying that one should give one's flesh to the mother and one's bones to the father, but this is not found in Buddhism. I don't know where this saying comes from."

The prototype of this story may come from the legend of Prince Sudhaṅgāthā cutting off his own flesh to feed his parents in the Buddhist scriptures . The story of Prince Sudhaṅgāthā is mentioned in Volume 3 of the Bodhisattva Jataka Garland, which was translated during the Northern Song Dynasty: In the past, the Buddha was Prince Sudhaṅgāthā, who was only seven years old. He followed his parents to seek refuge, but they ran out of food on the way. Starving and exhausted, Prince Sudhaṅgāthā cut off his own flesh to save his parents, so that they could reach their destination safely. This filial act moved the Emperor of Heaven, who used magic to restore the prince's flesh. The Zen monk's question of "What is Nātāra's original body?" is a bit like the "Ship of Theseus" in ancient Greek philosophy. The planks of an ancient ship have been gradually repaired and replaced. Is it still the original ship? The prince has regained his flesh again. Is this still his "original body"?

This Zen-filled question originally had nothing to do with Nezha, but "Prince Shansheng" is very similar to another title of the Buddha when he was a child in the "Buddha's Original Acts Collection Sutra", "Shansheng Tongzi", and because of the word "tongzi", "Shansheng Tongzi" was transferred to Nezha in the legends of the Song and Yuan dynasties. For example, the character in the Yuan Dynasty drama "Nezha's Three Transformations" called himself: My god is Shansheng Tongzi. Thousands of incarnations. It is actually Nezha's third prince. Since he inherited the name of the Buddha, it is natural to transfer the matter of cutting flesh to serve one's parents.

Li Nezha

Nezha originally came from India, so why did he have the surname Li?

Li Jing, the Pagoda-Bearing Heavenly King, was also born from Vaisravana. As one of the Ten Sages of the Martial Temple, the martial-virtuous Li Jing is indeed comparable to the Tantric war god Vaisravana. In the Tang Dynasty, Li Jing had gradually been deified .

The Cefu Yuangui records that there was a Li Jing temple in Chang'an. The Song Dynasty Biography of Yisheng Baode Zhenjun also mentioned that "there are dozens of foxes and ghosts in the Li Jing temple at the foot of the mountain." The Taiping Guangji quoted the Xu Xuanguai Lu saying that Li Jing helped the gods to make rain when he was young, and in the Yuanxianji, Li Jing simply became a god who gave people elixir. These stories are all related to Taoism, so how did Li Jing switch to Buddhism and become Nezha's father? This relationship may have to start from Khotan in Xinjiang .

Khotan, in Xuanzang's Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, was called Qusadan. It is said that its king claimed to be a descendant of Vaisravana . According to the inscription "September 3, the 10th year of Zhenguan" on the stele of "Tomb of Ye Hezhi, General of Bisha County of the Tang Dynasty" discovered in Xinjiang in the 1930s, it is known that as early as the 10th year of Zhenguan (636), the Tang Dynasty had established Bisha County in Khotan. The "Bisha" in Bisha County is undoubtedly the abbreviation of Vaisravana.

In Cave 98 of the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, there is a statue of Li Shengtian, the King of Khotan during the Five Dynasties. Below the statue is a figure with his feet supported by a heavenly figure, which is consistent with the statue of Vaisravana, indicating that what Xuanzang said was indeed true.

The statue of "The Great Emperor of Khotan, the Great Dynasty and the Great Treasure" at Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang

The original surname of the King of Khotan was Yuchi, but because of the marriage with the royal family of the Tang Dynasty during the heyday of the Tang Dynasty, the "Li Shengtian" in the "Old History of the Five Dynasties" and "History of the Song Dynasty" followed the tradition of the former minority regimes to use Chinese surnames through marriage. The King of Khotan originally claimed to be a descendant of Vaisravana, and in the late Tang Dynasty he adopted the surname Li, which is probably the earliest source of the saying that Vaisravana's surname was Li . Later, it spread to the Central Plains and married with Li Jing, the "God of War" of the Tang Dynasty who had been deified by Taoism , and finally asked Prince Nezha to change his household registration.

Planning and production

Author: Wang Hongzhi, Associate Professor, School of Humanities, Shanghai Normal University

Review丨Xu Weihong, Researcher at Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology

Planning丨Lin Lin

Editor: Wang Mengru

Proofread by Xu Lailinlin

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