Gadgadasvara [Wonderful-Voice Bodhisattva] finds brief mention in a personal letter Nichiren wrote to a woman who had made offerings to each of the Lotus Sūtra’s twenty-eight chapters. “The ‘Gadgadasvara’ chapter,” he wrote to her, “tells of a bodhisattva called Gadgadasvara (“Fine Sound”) who dwells in the land of the buddha Kamaladalavimalanakṣastrarā jasaṃkusumitābhijn͂a (“Knowledge [Conferred by] the King of Constellations [Named] Pure Flower”) in the east. In the past, in the age of the buddha Jaladharagarjitaghoṣasusvaranakṣatrarājasamkusumitābhijn͂a (“Flowering Wisdom of the King of Constellations [Named] Thunder-Sound of Clouds”), he was Lady Vimaladattā (Pure Virtue), the consort of King Śubhavyūha (Fine Adornment). At that time, Lady Vimaladattā made offerings to the Lotus Sūtra and was reborn as the present bodhisattva Gadgadasvara. When the tathagata Śākyamuni expounded the Lotus Sūtra in the Sahā world, this bodhisattva arrived and promised to protect those women who would embrace the Lotus Sūtra in a latter age.”

Here Nichiren draws on the interpretive tradition that Gadgadasvara had in a past life been the consort of King Subhavyūha, who appears in Chapter 27 of the Lotus, to assert that this bodhisattva will watch over the sūtra’s female devotees.