36 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 80 



mitra, where Malavika, a mortal woman, is to perform the ceremony, 

 the scene takes place beside a " slab of rock " under the asoka-tree, 

 and this shows that the tree itself was a sacred tree haunted by a 

 spirit/ 



The word dohada means a pregnancy longing, and the tree is repre- 

 sented as feeling, like a woman, such a longing, nor can its flowers 

 open until it is satisfied. Thus the whole conception, even in its latest 

 form as a mere piece of rhetoric, preserves the old connection be- 

 tween trees and tree spirits, and human life. 



3. The River-goddesses.^ The dryad types with makara vehicles 

 (pi. 6, figs. I and 2, pi. 14, fig. 2, and pi. 19, figs, i and 2) bear 

 an intimate relation, not amounting to identity, with the figures of 

 river-goddesses Gaiiga and Yamuna, with makara and tortoise vehicles 

 placed at the doorways of many northern medieval temples. I pro- 

 pose to discuss this subject more fully elsewhere. 



CONCLUSION 



The observations collected in the foregoing pages may be sum- 

 marized as follows : 



Kuvera and other Yaksas are indigenous non-Aryan deities or 

 genii, usually beneficent powers of wealth and fertility. Before 

 Buddhism and Jainism, they with a corresponding cosmology of the 

 Four or Eight Quarters of the Universe, had been accepted as ortho- 

 dox in Brahmanical theology. Their worship long survived, but in 

 purely sectarian literature they appear only to serve the ends of edifi- 

 cation, either as guardians and defenders of the faith, or to be pointed 

 to as horrible examples of depravity. 



Yaksa worship was a Bhakti cult, with images, temples, altars, and 

 offerings, and as the greater deities could all, from a popular point of 

 view, be regarded as Yaksas, we may safely recognize in the worship 

 of the latter (together with Nagas and goddesses) the natural source 

 of the Bhakti elements common to the whole sectarian development 

 which was taking place before the beginning of the Kusana period. 

 The designation Yaksa was originally practically synonymous with 

 Deva or Devata, and no essential distinction can be made between 

 Yaksas and Devas ; every Hindu deity, and even the Buddha, is spoken 



' Malainkclgtiimitra, Act. Ill; cf. Raghuvainsa, VIII, 62. 



^ River-goddesses : Smith, V. A., History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, 

 pp. 160, 161 and figs. Ill, 112; Maitra, A. K., The river-goddess Gahga, Riipam, 

 6, 1921 ; Vogel, Gahga et Yamuna dans I'iconographie bouddhique, Etudes 

 asiatiques, 1925 (the best discussion) ; Diez, E., Zwei unbekannte IVerke der 

 indischen Plastik in Ethuographisch Museum, Wien., Wiener Beitrage zur 

 Kunst und Kultur Asiens, I, 1926. 



