YAKSAS 



By ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY 



(With Twenty-three Pi.ates) 



I. INTRODUCTION 



In centuries preceding the Christian era, when the fusion of races 

 in India had already far advanced, the religion of India passed 

 through its greatest crises and underwent the most profound changes. 

 Vedic ritual, indeed, has survived in part up to the present day ; but 

 the religious outlook of medieval and modern India is so profoundly 

 different from that of the Vedic period, as known to us from the 

 extant literature, that we cannot apply to both a common designation ; 

 medieval and modern Hinduism is one thing, Vedic Brahmanism 

 another. The change is twofold, at once inward and spiritual, and 

 outward and formal. 



No doubt we are sufificiently aware of the spiritual revolution indi- 

 cated in the Upanisads and Buddhism, whereby the emphasis was 

 shifted from the outer world to the inner life, salvation became the 

 highest goal, and knowledge the means of attainment. But while this 

 philosophic development and spiritual coming of age have gradually 

 perfumed (to use a characteristically Indian phrase) the whole of 

 Indian civilization, there are here a background and ultimate signifi- 

 cance given to the social order, rather than the means of its actual 

 integration ; the philosophy of the Upanisads, the psychology of 

 Buddhism, indeed, were originally means only for those who had left 

 behind them the life of a householder, and thus in their immediate 

 application anti-social. But few in any generation are ripe for the 

 attainment of spiritual emancipation, and were it otherwise the social 

 order could not survive. The immediate purpose of Indian civiliza- 

 tion is not Nirvana or Moksa, but Dharma; not a desertion of the 

 household life, but the fulfillment of function. And here, in Karma- 

 yoga, the spiritual support is found, not in pure knowledge, but in 

 devotion to higher powers, personally conceived, and directly ap- 

 proached by appropriate offices (piija) and means (sddhand). In 

 the words of the Bhagavad Glta: " He who on earth doth not follow 



the wheel (of activity) thus revolving, liveth in vain He that 



doeth that which should be done, he is the true Monk, the true Yogi. 



Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections Vol. 80, No. 6 



