Ne-zha (Ho-zha, Na-zha) is the son of the military leader Li Jing. He was born in the form of a round lump of meat, from which emerged a three and a half year old baby with a red silk belt and a magic bracelet on his right wrist. With the help of these talismans, he performed many miracles and heroic deeds. But one day Ne-zha accidentally killed the son of the dragon king himself, and Li Jing was called to account for this crime. To save his father from certain death, Ne-ja surrendered to the king of dragons and committed suicide to atone for his guilt. Subsequently, the spirit of Ne-zha moved into a clay statue in the temple, and when his father Li Jing broke the statue, a Taoist saint, the patron of Ne-zha named Tai-i zhen-zhen, using magical means, created a new Ne-zha from a lotus. Resurrected, he tried to take revenge on his father for his forced suicide, but his father was taken under the intercession of the bodhisattva Wenshu (Manjushri), who, with the help of an elegantly made pagoda, pacified the frantic Ne-zha, and then presented the pagoda to Li Jing so that he could do it himself at any time (hence Li Jing’s nickname - Li To-ta, “Li holding the pagoda”).
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru