NO. 6 YAKSAS — COOMARASWAMY I3 



In Buddhist works the Yakkhas are sometimes represented as 

 teachers of good morals, and as guardian spirits. Thus in Thcra- 

 then-gatha, XLIV, Sanu Sutta/ Sanu had been the son of a YakkhinT 

 in a former birth ; now this Yakkhini " controUing " (as SpirituaHsts 

 would say) Sanu, warns and advises his present human mother as 

 follows : 



Your son has a tendency to roam, wherefore bid him rouse himself. Tell him 

 what the Yakkhas say : 



" Do nought of evil, open or concealed. 

 If evil thou doest or wilt do, 

 Thou shalt not escape from evil e'en though thou flee." 



But more often, as in the Atandt'iyCi Sutfanta, the Yakkhas are said to 

 be unbelievers, to whom the ethics of the Buddhas are distasteful ; 

 they " haunt the lonely and remote recesses of the forest, where noise, 

 where sound, hardly is, where breezes from the pastures blow, hidden 

 from men, suitable for meditation. There do eminent Yakkhas dwell, 

 who have no faith in the word of the Exalted One." " 



In the Vijaya legend the aboriginal inhabitants of Ceylon are called 

 Yakkhas.'' One of Vijaya's men follows a bitch, who is the Yakkhini 

 Kuvanna in disguise ; she bewitches him, and all those who follow 

 him, but cannot devour them, as they are protected by charmed 

 threads. Vijaya follows, overcomes the YakkhitiT, and obtains the 

 release of the men; Kuvanna takes the form of a beautiful girl, and 

 Vijaya marries her (almost the Circe motif !). She enables him to 

 destroy the invisible Yakkhas who inhabit the land, and he becomes 



Mahavira (in the Kalpa Siltra, see Jacobi, S. B. E., XXII). In the Antagada 

 Dasao we find him worshipped (Barnett, Antagada Dasao, p. 67, cited below, 

 p. 25). He is represented in an early relief from Mathura (Smith, Jaina stiipa 

 of Mathura, pi. XVII) with an inscription in which he is designated Bhagava 

 Nemeso ; also in some other early but mutilated reliefs in the Mathura 

 Museum., and regularly in the illustrations to the Jaina manuscripts of the 

 Kalpa Sutra (Coomaraswamy, Cat. Indian Collections, Museum of Fine Arts, 

 Boston, pt. IV). 



Mara, and his hosts of deformed demons, is brilliantly represented at SancI, 

 north toraija, middle architrave, back (pi. 23, fig. 3). In a medieval relief 

 at Sarnath he is provided with a niakaradhvaja (Ann. Rep. Arch. Surv. India, 

 1904-05, p. 84) : as Kamadeva, with Rati, at Elura, in the Kailasa shrine, he 

 also has a niakaradhvaja. 



' Rhys Davids, Psalms of the Brethren, p. 48. Cf. ibid., p. 245, the older and 

 later attitude side by side, the Yakkha, though a cannibal, being invoked as the 

 guardian of a child. 



' Dig ha Nikaya, III, 195 (Rhys Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha, Part 3, in 

 S. B. B., IV). 



" Mahavamsa, Ch. VII. 



