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This article examines how the Dragon Princess, one of the most celebrated characters in the Lotus Sutra, is represented in the noh drama Ama and the Heike Nokyo sutra set. By doing so, it debunks the prevailing consensus in understanding the Dragon Princess and her episode in the sutra, and illustrates a hitherto unnoticed intrinsic affinity between medieval Japanese engi stories and Buddhist scriptural narratives.KEYWORDS: Lotus Sutra-Dragon Princess-henjo nanshi-ryunyo jobutsu- Buddhism-gender and narrativity-Heike nokyo-ama (female diver)(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)The Heike n?ky?, a twelfth-century set of thirty-three scriptural scrolls preserved at Itsukushima Shrine in Hiroshima Prefecture, is one of the most sumptuous and elaborate examples of medieval Japanese illustrated Buddhist scriptural manuscripts. One of the scrolls, the "Devadatta" chapter of the Lotus Sutra, bears a frontispiece that features the Dragon Princess, the celebrated protagonist of the chapter (figure 1). The illustration is arguably the most sublime representation of the princess in visual art. Although recent studies of the Dragon Princess have made her famous for her sudden change of sex and transformation into a Buddha, the princess in the frontispiece simply offers her jewel to the Buddha. She shows no sign of physical metamorphosis. What sort of interpretive strategies are required to understand her act as represented in the frontispiece?Engi Literature and Buddhist Scriptural NarrativesThis article aims at illustrating an intrinsic affinity between medieval Japanese engi ... materials in textual, performative, and visual genres, and Buddhist scriptural materials. The prevailing consensus among scholars has long held that the term engi is an appropriation of the Buddhist doctrinal term "dependent co-origination" (Sk. prat?tyasa?utp?da), which is translated in the Chinese canon as innen sh?ki ... (Ch. yinyuan shengqi) and abbreviated in more common use as engi (Ch. yuanqi). However, the concept of dependent coorigination means that all things in the world are intrinsically neither rising nor ceasing; everything originates from its non-origin. Obviously such a philosophical idea would not accord well with medieval engi narratives, which are designed to account for the specific provenance of temples, shrines, or other sacred sites, the divinities worshipped there, and/or visual and material representations of those divinities.Although it is not as well known today, an alternative etymology links the word engi to another significant Buddhist term, namely, nid?na (Jp. nidana; Ch. nituona ...), which literally means origin (sho ....), provenance (hokki ...), cause (in ...), and original cause (shoin ...). More importantly for this article, nid?na is the name for one of the twelve categories of Buddhist scriptural discourse (Sk. dv?da???ga-dharma-pravacana; Ch. shierbujing; Jp. j?nibuky? ... or ...). Nid?na in this sense is translated more commonly as either engi or innen ... As a category of scriptural narratives, nid?na or engi consist of stories that aim at revealing the original cause of sermons delivered by the Buddha, vinaya rules he established, and strange and miraculous events caused or witnessed by him. In most cases, the origins of the events described are found in the former lives of the Buddha or his disciples in the distant past. In that regard, nid?na are closely linked to two other narrative categories in scriptural discourse, namely, j?taka (Ch. bensheng; Jp. honj? ...), stories of the Buddha's former lives; and itiv?ttaka (Ch. benshi; Jp. honji ...), stories of the former lives of the Buddha's disciples, both ordained and lay.1Because nid?na, j?taka, and itiv?ttaka are often employed as elaborate, didactic narrative figures within the scriptures, they often overlap with avad?na (Ch. piyu; Jp. hiyu ...), yet another narrative entity within the twelve categories, which consists of teaching by means of metaphors and parables. …

Revisiting the Dragon Princess: Her Role in Medieval Engi Stories and Their Implications in Reading the Lotus Sutra