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CHAPTER NINE
Sāsana-Devatās
A. YAKŞA WORSHIP IN JAINISM
Ancient Indian literature, Hindu, Buddhist or Jaina is full of references to Yakşas, as also to other spirits like the Nāgas, Apsarasas, Gandharvas, and so on. Coomaraswamy in his excellent pioneer work on the Yakşas has shown that the designation Yaksa was originally practically synonymous with Deva or Devatã and no essential distinction can be made between Yakşas and Devas. In the earlier Vedic texts there is a total absence of many of the most fundamental features of Hinduism properly so called, it is only in the Brāhmaṇas and Upanişads that the ideas of Sarnsära, Karma, Yoga, Bhakti etc. begin to appear and the same applies to the cults of Siva, Krsna, Yakşas, Nägas, innumerable gods and goddesses and localised deities. These ideas and deities derive, not from the Vedic Aryan tradition, but as De la Vallee Poussin expresses it, "From uncertain fond common, tres riche, et que nons ne connaissous pas par faitement." It must not be overlooked that in the Vedas, and in the literature before the second century B.C., we possess only one-sided view of the Indian religion and representing, quantitatively at least, the smaller part of the Indian religion. The mass of the people worshipped, not the abstract deities of priestly theology, but local genii, yakşas and någas, and feminine divinities of increase and mother-goddesses. These popular beliefs and cults were probably of non-Aryan origin, at least a large number of them appear to be of Dravidian, non-Aryan or indigenous origin. It should be noted that the clans particularly associated with such beliefs and cults were by no means completely Brahmanised, and most of the earliest figures of the yakşas, någas, vşkşa-devatās are to be found in the Buddhist remains at Bharhut.2
The word yaksa occurs several times in the Rgveda, Atharvaveda, Brāhmaṇas and the Upanişads. The word yaksa in the Jaiminiyu Brálmana (iii. 203-272) means nothing more than a 'wondrous thing'. In the sense of a spirit or genius, usually associated with Kubera, it does not appear before the age of the Grhya-sutras where yakşas are invoked together with the numerous other major and minor deities all classed as Bhutas. In a somewhat later book they are possessing spirits of diseases-grahas (Mänava-GrhyaSutra. IL. 14), while the Sankhayana Grhya Sūtra mentions Manibhadra. In the Satapatha Brahmana, Kubera is a Raksasa and lord of robbers and evil doers which suggests that he was an aboriginal deity alien to Brahmanical pantheon. In the Sätras he is invoked with Isäna for the husband in the marriage ritual and his hosts plague children.
In earlier Buddhist records, Yakkha as an appellation is, like Niga, anything but deprecative. Not only is Sakka so called but Buddha himself is so referred to in poetic diction (M ujjhima Nikaya, 1.252, 353). In the Angutiara Nikäya, II.37, Buddha finds it necessary to say that he is not a Deva, Gandhabba or Yakkha. In the Anguttara Nikaya, Buddhist literature, Yakklas are sometimes represented as teachers of good morals and as guardian spirits (Thera-Theri gāthi, XLIV). Tibetan sources cited by A. Schneifner (Tibetan Tales from Kah-gjur, Ralston, p. 81) show that the Sikyas honoured a yakşa by name Sakyavardhana as a tutelary deity. The inscription on the Pawaya image of Minibhadra shows that the vaksa was worshipped by the goşthas or merchants."
The Mahamivuri which gives a list of Yakas of different places a list of well-known shrines of
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