Suzudan [須頭檀] (): A king who appears in the “Devadatta” (twelfth) chapter of the Lotus Sutra. Although the king’s name does not appear in any extant Sanskrit or Chinese texts of the sutra, for unknown reasons he was so named in Japan. According to the sutra, when Shakyamuni was a king in a past life, he renounced the throne to seek the correct teaching and selflessly devoted himself to serving the seer Asita for a thousand years, as a result of which he was able to learn the Lotus Sutra from the seer. This king was later reborn as Shakyamuni, and the seer as Devadatta.