Nezha

Also Known As: 哪吒; also written Nazha, 那吒, and romanised Ne Zha or No-cha; the Third Prince, third son of Li Jing; the name is a shortened Chinese rendering of the Sanskrit Nalakūbara
Region/Culture: East Asia
Mythos: Chinese Mythology, Buddhist Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: He fights with a gold ring, a red silk sash and a fire-tipped spear, rides two wheels of wind and fire, and wears a body rebuilt from lotus after he destroyed his first one.
Role in Mythos: He is Heaven’s boy general, a queller of demons and dragons, sent into the world in the Ming novel Investiture of the Gods to fight as vanguard in the war that ends the Shang dynasty.
Relation to Humans: He was born into a human family, the third son of the garrison commander Li Jing and Lady Yin, and he gave his flesh and bones back to them to settle his own crimes. He is still worshipped, and the novel itself shows pilgrims crowding his first temple within months of his death.

The room was full of red light and a fragrance nobody could name. Lady Yin had carried the child for three years and six months, long enough for her husband Li Jing, commander of the garrison at Chentang Pass, to say aloud that whatever she was carrying could not be an ordinary baby. That night she dreamed that a Taoist walked into her bedchamber and pushed something into her arms, and she woke in labour. What the maids ran to report was a ball of flesh, rolling across the floor like a wheel. Li Jing came in with his sword drawn and split it open. A boy sprang out and ran about the room, his face white as powder, a gold ring on his right wrist and a length of red silk around his belly.

That is the birth as the Ming novel *Investiture of the Gods* tells it. The next day an immortal called Taiyi came to the gate, asked to see the child, named him Nezha and claimed him as a disciple. The ring and the sash were treasures from Taiyi’s own cave, and the ring had come down to him from the Jade Void Palace on Mount Kunlun. The narrator adds what the parents did not yet know: the boy was the Spirit Pearl, a being sent down from Heaven to serve as vanguard in the war that would end the Shang dynasty.

He was a danger long before any war. At seven, in the heat of the fifth month, he walked out of the pass with a servant, sweating, found a river running green between willows, and sat on a rock to wash. He dipped the red sash in the water. The river turned red to its mouth, and under the sea the crystal palace of the Dragon King shook. A yaksha who patrolled the sea came up to look, blue-faced, red-haired and carrying an axe, and Nezha killed him with one throw of the ring, then rinsed the ring clean. The Dragon King’s third son, Ao Bing, rode out next on a water beast with a halberd in his hand. Nezha wrapped him in the sash, set a foot on his neck and struck. The prince’s true shape lay stretched on the ground, a dragon, and the boy drew out its sinew to plait a belt for his father’s armour.

The Dragon King, Ao Guang, set off to lay the matter before the Jade Emperor. Taiyi drew a talisman on his pupil’s chest that made him invisible, and Nezha waited at the gate of Heaven, knocked the old dragon flat, tore forty or fifty scales from his side, and carried him home in a sleeve in the form of a small green snake. Then, bored and hot on the gate tower, he found the bow and arrows the Yellow Emperor had left there after his war with Chi You, which no one had ever been able to lift, and loosed one into the sky. It killed the servant of a rock spirit called Lady Shiji on a distant mountain. She came for the family, took the ring and the sash from the boy as easily as catching them in her sleeve, and was burned back to bare stone by Taiyi.

By then the four Dragon Kings had the Jade Emperor’s leave to seize Li Jing and his wife. Nezha came home to find them at the door. One person’s deed is one person’s debt, he told them. He would cut open his belly and return his flesh and bones to his father and mother, and no blame would touch them. The dragons agreed. He took a sword, cut off an arm, opened himself, and died. He was seven years old. His mother put what was left in a coffin and buried it.

His spirit came to her in dreams, night after night, asking for a temple on a mountain forty li away, since without incense it had nowhere to rest and no way to take form again. She built it in secret. It answered prayers, and within half a year the road was thick with pilgrims. Li Jing rode past with his troops, asked whose shrine it was, smashed the statue with his whip and had the building burned. So Taiyi made the boy a body. He laid out two lotus flowers and three leaves, broke the stalks into three hundred joints, set a golden pill in the middle and pushed the spirit in. A youth stood up, sixteen feet tall, with red lips and bright eyes. Taiyi gave him a fire-tipped spear, two wheels of wind and fire to stand on, and a leopard-skin bag holding the ring, the sash and a brick of gold.

The first thing the new Nezha did was go home to kill his father. He owed him nothing, he said; the flesh and bones had been paid back. The wheels came on with a noise like wind and fire, and Li Jing fled across the country. A second son who tried to stop the chase was felled with the gold brick. It ended when an immortal dropped a golden pagoda over Nezha and set it burning until he called Li Jing “father” aloud, then gave the pagoda to Li Jing to keep. That is why the father is known as the Pagoda-Bearing Heavenly King.

Other tellings change the helper and keep the wound. In *Journey to the West* the child is named for the two characters found written on his palms, wrecks the dragon palace at three days old, and cuts his flesh away for his mother and his bones for his father. His soul flies to the Buddha, who gives him bones of lotus root and clothes of lotus leaf, and later hands the father the pagoda. In that book one brother serves the Buddha and the other is a disciple of Guan Yin, and Nezha leads Heaven’s troops against Sun Wukong, fights him again and again, and cannot win. The father, caught one day without the pagoda in his hand, goes pale. A compendium of gods printed under the Ming, the *Sanjiao soushen daquan*, starts earlier still. There Nezha was an immortal under the Jade Emperor, sixty feet tall, with three heads, nine eyes and eight arms, a golden wheel on his head and blue cloud on his breath, sent down because the world had too many demon kings. He kills nine dragons at seven days old, is remade by the Buddha, and ends as chief of Heaven’s thirty-six generals, set to guard the gate of Heaven for good.

He was not Chinese to begin with. The historian Meir Shahar, who wrote a book on him, traces the god to Nalakūbara, a figure of the Sanskrit epics who reached China through esoteric Buddhism, and the Chinese translations of those Buddhist texts already show a fierce deity with three heads and six arms. He has been honoured in China for more than a thousand years, by Buddhist monks, by Daoist priests and by spirit mediums who take him into their own bodies.

His strength is his equipment and his nature together. The ring kills at a throw, the sash binds and burns, the wheels outrun a horse, and the lotus body, in the older account, can swell or shrink at will. His limits are just as plain. Lady Shiji disarmed him with a sleeve. As a bare spirit he depended on a mother’s shrine and a stranger’s incense, and lost both in an afternoon. His temper is the reason Taiyi sent him to be beaten by another immortal, to grind the killing out of him, and it is why his father still carries a pagoda.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Nezha in Chinese mythology?

Nezha is a boy god and warrior of Chinese mythology, the third son of the garrison commander Li Jing and Lady Yin. In the Ming novel Investiture of the Gods he is the Spirit Pearl, sent down from Heaven to fight in the war that ends the Shang dynasty. He fights with a gold ring, a red silk sash and a fire-tipped spear, and rides two wheels of wind and fire.

Why did Nezha kill himself?

Nezha killed the Dragon King’s third son, Ao Bing, and one of the Dragon King’s sea guards, and the four Dragon Kings came to seize his parents in punishment. To clear them, Nezha cut open his own body and returned his flesh and bones to his father and mother. He was seven years old in the novel’s telling.

How was Nezha brought back to life?

In Investiture of the Gods his teacher, the immortal Taiyi, built him a new body from two lotus flowers and three lotus leaves and pushed his spirit into it. In Journey to the West and in the Sanjiao soushen daquan it is the Buddha who remakes him from lotus. In all three tellings the new body is made of lotus.

Why does Nezha’s father carry a pagoda?

After his rebirth Nezha tried to kill his father, Li Jing, for destroying the temple that housed his spirit. An immortal trapped Nezha inside a burning golden pagoda until he acknowledged Li Jing as his father, then gave the pagoda to Li Jing to hold. In Journey to the West the Buddha gives the pagoda, and Li Jing is known as the Pagoda-Bearing Heavenly King.

Where does Nezha come from originally?

Nezha began outside China. The historian Meir Shahar traces him to Nalakūbara, a figure of the Sanskrit epics who entered China through esoteric Buddhism. He has been honoured in China for more than a thousand years by Buddhist monks, Daoist priests and spirit mediums.