NO. 6 YAKSAS — COOMARASWAMY 3 



such scriptures is beyond proof, it is at least certain that religious 

 traditions, which must be spoken of as Agamic in contradistinction 

 to Vedic, are abundant and must reach far back into the past. This 

 past, moreover, has been proved by recent archeological discoveries 

 to have been much more ancient and to have been characterized by a 

 much higher culture than had been formerly recognized. And we 

 know so well the continuity of Indian racial psychology during the 

 historical period, that we cannot but believe that long before this 

 period begins the Indians had been, as they are today, essentially 

 worshippers of personal deities. 



In the beginning, when Aryans and non-Aryans were at war, in 

 the period of military conquest and greatest social exclusiveness, and 

 before the two elements had learned to live together, or had evolved 

 a conception of life covering and justifying all its phases, a divergence 

 between the two types of religious consciousness had been profound ; 

 in those days the despised worshippers of the sisna (phallus) might 

 not approach the Aryan sacrifice. As time passed the dividing lines 

 grew fainter, and in the end there was evolved a faith so tolerant and 

 so broad that it could embrace in a common theological scheme all 

 grades of religious practise, from that of the pure monist to that of 

 savages living in the forests and practising human sacrifice. 



Now, regarding the accomplished fact, it is not always easy to dis- 

 tinguish the separate elements that made so great a creative achieve- 

 ment possible. We are apt both to over- and underestimate the sig- 

 nificance of what we describe as primitive animism. 



Hinduism, quantitatively regarded, is a worship of one deity under 

 various aspects, and of genii and saints and demons, whose aid may 

 be invoked either for spiritual or for altogether material ends. This 

 Hinduism, in the period we have referred to, broadly speaking, that 

 of the last three centuries before Christ, was not so much coming 

 into existence for the first time, as coming into consciousness and 

 prominence. 



Dr. \'ogel, in Indian Serpent Lore, has very recently and very 

 admirably studied the old Indian (or perhaps we ought rather to say, 

 the Indian aspect of the widespread Asiatic) cult of Nagas or Dragons, 

 guardian spirits of the Waters. 



In the following pages I have attempted to bring together, from 

 literary and monumental sources, material sufficient to present a 

 fairly clear picture of an even more important phase of non- and 

 pre-Aryan Indian " animism," the worship of Yaksas and Yaksis, 

 and to indicate its significance in religious history and iconographic 

 evolution. 



