Yakshas v2: Volume 2

Yakṣas v2

Language: English

v2.c5 Front matter — 17 parts
v2.c6 Explanation of Plates — 304 parts

Volume 2

Front matter

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BY ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY Keeper of Indian, Persian, and Muhammadan Art Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

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BY ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY Keeper of Indian, Persian, and Muhammadan Art Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

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The Lord Baltimore Press BALTIMORE, MD., U. S. A.

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By ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY (WITH 50 PLATES)

1. Addenda to Yakṣas, Part I

¹ My *Yakṣas*, Washington, 1928, is now out of print. The Addenda here made (amongst which those to be substituted for two paragraphs on page 5 of the original text are by far the most important) will be incorporated in a new edition; in the meantime they are made available to those who possess the first.

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PAGE 2, note 1, add: Arbman, E., *Rudra*, Upsala, 1922. M. Peri (B. É. F. E. O., XVII, ii, p. 46) has remarked in connection with *bali* offerings (*bhūta-yajña*) of all kinds that they "present a family likeness which leads us to suppose that they are all, whether Buddhist or Brahmanical, derived from ancient rites."

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PAGE 4, note 3, add: Walhouse, J. M., *On the belief in bhutas, devil and ghost worship in Western India*, Journ. Anthrop. Soc., 1876, pp. 411, 412; and Wickremasinghe, Don M. de Z., *Cat. Sinhalese Mss. in the British Museum*, 1900, pp. 44-54.

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PAGE 5, substitute for the first and second paragraphs:

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The word Yakṣa occurs several times in the *Ṛg Veda*, *Atharva Veda*, *Brāhmaṇas*, and *Upaniṣads*; in the earlier texts it has generally been thought to mean "something wonderful or terrible," not clearly definable. In the most recent discussion, Hillebrandt² finds as the earliest meaning "magician, uncouth being, unseen spiritual enemy, etc.," then simply a "supernatural being of exalted character," and finally "Yakṣa" in the ordinary sense. The etymology of "Yakṣa" is very uncertain; Professor A. B. Keith writes to me that he regards it as obviously connected with the root *yaj*, to worship; Hillebrandt suggests a connection with Vedic *yakṣ* in *pra-yakṣ*, to honor. There may be a connection with the mysterious fever called *yakṣma* in the *Atharva Veda*. Or the word, as well as the source of the concept, may be non-Aryan.

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² Hillebrandt, A., *Vedisch Yakṣa*, in *Festgabe Richard Garbe*, Erlangen, 1927.

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In any case the ideas of the wonderful, mysterious, supernatural, unknown, of magical power, invisibility, and spirit-hood are all more or less involved in the early references; but these ideas are hardly to be distinguished from those connected with the Yakṣa concept when later on the cult of Yakṣas comes clearly into view, and it is often, especially at that time, difficult to distinguish between Deva, Devatā, and Yakṣa, especially in the Buddhist literature, where all alike are regarded as rebirths of human beings, and subject in due course to further human incarnation. In one place or another every Indian deity without exception, is spoken of as a Yakṣa, and in all these cases the sense is honorific.

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In the earliest texts a dual attitude is recognizable, one of fear and dislike, the other of respect. The first seems to me to reflect merely an Aryan dislike and distrust of aboriginal deities. For this attitude we have the texts RV., IV, 3, 13 “Do not (O Agni) consort with the Yakṣa (? familiar spirit) of any smooth swindler, intriguing neighbour, etc.”; RV., V, 70, 4 “Let us not, O ye gods of great power, encounter a Yakṣa”; RV., VII, 56, 16 yakṣadṛṣo “espying the Yakṣa” (regarded as an invisible enemy to what is being undertaken); RV., VII, 6, 15 where yakṣa in the sense “invisible” seems to be contrasted with citra in the sense of “visible” and Kauśika Sūtra, 93, 3, where Yakṣas are classed with other adbhūtāni as creatures of ill-omen. Charpentier, in J. R. A. S., 1930, pp. 325-345, argues that the word nāicaśākha in RV., III, 53, 14, means “worshippers of the banyan tree” and that the cult was hateful to Aryans because of human sacrifices performed in connection with it (for a contrary view see ib., p. 894).

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Before discussing the second attitude, that of high respect, characteristically exhibited in the Atharva Veda and Upaniṣads, reference must be made to RV., I, 24, 7, “In the Unsupported (sky) King Varuṇa, he of purified intelligence, sets up the top of the tree. Downward are they (the branches), above their base. May the rays reside in us”; and RV., X, 82, 5 “Prior to the sky, prior to this earth, prior to the living gods, what is that Germ which the waters held first and in which all the gods existed? The waters held that same Germ in which all the gods existed; on the navel of the Unborn stood that in which all beings stood.” This prototype of the later (Mbh. III, 272, 44 and XII, 207, 13) conception of the reclining Nārāyaṇa, resting upon the waters, and giving birth to Brahmā (demiurge) by way of a lotus, of which the stem rises from his (Nārāyaṇa’s) navel, is developed as follows, in the Atharva Veda, X, 7, 38, with reference to Varuṇa, Brahman or Prajāpati as the supreme and ultimate source of life: “A great Yakṣa in the midst of the universe, reclining in concentrated-energy (tapas) on the back of the waters, therein are set whatever gods there be, like the branches of a tree about a trunk.”

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Significance is to be attached to this concept of the tree of life springing from a navel.¹ For Yakṣas are primarily vegetation spirits, guardians of the vegetative source of life (rasa = sap in trees = soma = amṛta), and thus closely connected with the waters.² These ideas of the origin of life in the waters are set forth in the later “decorative” art of the water-cosmology by the constantly recurring formula of a lotus rhizome bearing leaves and flowers (latā-kamma, malā-kamma, Vin. 117, 152, cf. latā-yaṭṭhi, kusuma-yaṭṭhi, Mhv. XI, 10-13), often supporting or framing birds and animals (cf. sakuna-yaṭṭhi, Mhv., loc. cit.), and typically springing from the mouth or navel of a Yakṣa, or the more obvious water symbols, the brimming vessel (puṇṇa-ghaṭa) or open jaws of a makara or a fish-tailed elephant. A fuller treatment of this subject will be found below; here we need only remark a connecting link between the Yakṣa, who is Brahman and the later Yakṣas who are Lords of Life. That Yakṣas in the accepted sense are familiar to the Atharva Veda is more definitely established in VIII, 10, 28 where Kubera and his son are already called puṇyajana (also ib. XI, 10, 24), “good folk” (itarajana, “other folk” in the Kashmir text), and what they are said to “milk” from Virāj as their subsistence is the power of concealment. In A.V., XI, 6, 10 Yakṣas are invoked with all the other gods mentioned in the same section.

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¹ See my Tree of Jesse, and Indian parallels or sources, Art Bulletin, XI, 2, 1929. The creative significance of the navel appears also in Avestan mythology in connection with Apām Napāt = Vedic Apām Napāt, the “son of the waters,” who is also Agni, the word napāt meaning both “offspring” and “navel of,” cf. Zend nāfyo, “offspring,” from nāfa, “navel.” On the sexual significance of the navel (nābhi) and vedi as both representing the womb of the Earth Goddess see Johannsen, Ueber die altindische Göttin Dhiṣaṇā, pp. 51-55. A relation or identity of Apām Napāt with Varuṇa is suggested by RV., II, 35, 8 and V, 2, 8 where all creatures and plants are described as shooting out from Apām Napāt and multiplying in progeny. Cf. below, p. 24, note.

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² Cf. RV., VII, 65, 2 and 88, 6, also Dīgha Nikāya, II, 204, where Varuṇa is called a Yakṣa; AV., XI, 2, 24 “Thine, O Paśupati, is the Yakṣa within the waters, for thine increase flow the waters of heaven”; Vessavaṇa’s (Kubera’s) sea Dharaṇī “whence arise the clouds, whence the rain falls” (Dīgha Nikāya, II, 201); the powers exercised by the tutelary Yakṣa Sāta (p. 3, infra); and the connection of the Yakṣas and Yakṣīs with makaras and other riverine monsters as “vehicles.”

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To speak then of Brahman or Prajāpati as a great Yakṣa is effectively to say of him, great divinity, great power. Nor is this the only Vedic passage (though it may be the earliest) in which he is thus called Yakṣa. In the Gopatha Brāhmaṇa, I, 1 and Tāitt. Brāhmaṇa, 3, 12, 3, I Brahman speaking says “by concentrated energy (tapas) I became the primal Yakṣa”; in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, 5, 4 we have “He who knows that great Yakṣa as the primal-born, that is, that Brahma is the Real, he conquers these worlds”; in Kena Upaniṣad, 3, (15), and Jāiminīya Upaniṣad Brāhmaṇa, IV, 20, where Brahman shows himself to the gods, who know him not, they ask “What Yakṣa is this?” and come at last to know through “Umā” that it is Brahman. In all these cases, no doubt the implication “wonderful being” is involved; but we come much nearer to understanding the native plexus of ideas if we retain the original “Yakṣa,” than we do by a translation expressly designed to avoid a supposedly mistaken identification of the Vedic and the later Yakṣa concept. As a matter of fact, as we have already shown, the Yakṣa concept in its “later” sense was certainly known to the Atharva Veda, and therefore and so much the more was it certainly well-known in the time of the Upaniṣads. In reality the Aupaniṣadic “Brahman-Yakṣa” represents a concept that goes back to the Ṛg Veda, where it is originally applicable to Varuṇa. An intermediate stage is represented in a passage of the Atharva Veda (X, 3, 43) where the indwelling spirit or self of man is called ātmanvat Yakṣa—“The lotus flower of nine gates, veiled by the three qualities (guṇas), what self-like Yakṣa dwells therein, that (only) the Brahman-knowers know.”

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For Yakkha as individual soul see also Pali Text Soc., Pali Dictionary, s. v. Yakkha, 7. As ātmanvat and as ārakkha devatā, cf. Persian Fravashi.

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In the Gṛhya Sūtras (Gobhila, 3, 4, 28; Āśvalāyana, 3, 4, 1; Śāṅkhāyana, 4, 93) Yakṣas are invoked as bhūtāni; Kubera with Iśāna, for the husband in the marriage ritual (Pāraskara, I, 8, 2; Śāṅkhāyana, I, 11, 7).

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Bharhut inscriptions make all four of the Mahārājas or Regents, and not only Kubera, into Yakṣas.

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PAGE 5, note 2, read: The word Bhūta might be rendered “those who (were originally men, and) have (now) become (spirits).” Add: Cf. Arbman, E., Rudra, Upsala, 1922, pp. 165 ff., where the use of the word is discussed at length.

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PAGE 6, line 21, add: Kubera’s wife is called Bhadrā, “Lucky” in Mahābhārata, I, 199, 6, and Ṛddhi, “Success,” ib., XIII, 146, 4, f.; he is also said to be united to Lakṣmī (ib., III, 168, 13, etc.) but she is here to be regarded mainly in a general sense as the goddess of Fortune, who associates herself with all great kings. In the Buddhist legends about Kubera as Pāñcika, his wife (Nandā, Abhirati, Hāritī) has a much more definite character. In the later art the form of Hāritī is closely assimilated to that of Śrī-Lakṣmī. I have mislaid a reference to Kuberā as goddess of a garden.

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PAGE 6, paragraph 3, continue: Jātaka No. 281 tells of the great mango tree of Vessavaṇa Mahārāja, which grows on the Golden Mountain in the Himalayas, and is guarded by Kumbhaṇḍa-rakkhasas; and in Jātaka No. 489, where the rope trick is described, the tree magically produced is called “Vessavaṇa’s mango.” The Indian rope trick is described in detail in early Celtic literature, where it is attributed to Manannan Mac Lir, god of the sea (Standish Hayes O’Grady, Silva Gadelica, London, 1892, p. 321): Cf. Celtic “good folk” and “hidden people” with Indian puṇyajana and guhyaka designating Yakṣas.

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PAGE 6, note 2, add: Statues of Kubera are to be set up in the crypt of a treasury, Kauṭilya, Arthaśāstra, II, 4, see Meyer, p. 75.

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PAGE 6, note 3, add: The jewel-bearing lotus rhizome of the Bharhut coping relief has its source in the mouth of a kneeling elephant, not in this case a fish-tailed elephant; the idea expressed is very clearly conveyed by a passage in the, of course much later, Daśakumāracarita of Dandin, Ch. X, where a girl is compared to a “jeweled vine (ratana-mañjarīkā) from the wishing-tree in Paradise (nandana-kalpa-vṛkṣa) plucked by the sky elephant (Airāvata) and tossed to earth.” Nandana, of course, is equally the paradise of Indra and of Kubera (Hopkins, Epic mythology, p. 84), though Airāvata (a rain-cloud) is primarily Indra’s elephant steed (perhaps once Varuṇa’s). See pl. 77, figs. 1-3.

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PAGE 7, line 19, add: In the Vidhura Paṇḍita Jātaka Puṇṇaka is Senapati (General) and nephew of Vessavaṇa.

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PAGE 7, line 29, after addition, add: but the conception of Gaṇeśa in his original capacity of causer of hindrances to worship (pūjā-vighnakartṛṇām) occurs frequently.

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PAGE 7, end of third paragraph, add: Sir Charles Eliott informs me that in Japanese Buddhist temples where Gaṇeśa is worshipped the offerings made include spirits (sake), although as a rule alcohol is strictly forbidden in such places, and this affords further evidence of Gaṇeśa’s Yakṣa connections.

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In several places there are indications of a connection of the goddess Śrī (Lakṣmī) with Yakṣas, e. g., as wife of Dharma in the Epic, she is the mother of Kāmadeva, and her hand bears the mark of a makara, his symbol; in some Chinese Buddhist texts (Peri, loc. cit., p. 39) she is the daughter of Māṇibhadra. In Jātaka No. 392 she is the daughter of Dhataraṭṭha, who is a Yakṣa at Bharhut. See my Early Indian iconography, II. Śrī-Lakṣmī, in Eastern Art, Part 3, 1929.

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PAGE 7, note 2, add: According to Burgess and Indraji, Inscriptions from the cave temples of Western India, 1881, p. 87, there was originally at the end of the verandah of Cave XVII at Ajaṇṭā a painting of a royal figure, with the inscription Māṇibhadra. Yakṣas play important parts in Dhanavala’s *Bhavisatta Kaha* (ed. Jacobi, 1916), where Māṇibhadra is mentioned (p. 13*); and in Haribhadra’s *Sanatkumāracarita* (ed. Jacobi, 1921).

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PAGE 7, last paragraph, add footnote: In the *Rāmāyaṇa*, Tāḍaka, originally a Yakṣiṇī, becomes a Rākṣasī, and this is a great fall. In the *Petavatthu Aṭṭhakathā*, 110 the *devatta bhāva* of Yakṣas is contrasted with the *petatta bhāva* of Petas.

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PAGE 8, note 1, add: For the cult of Kubera in Java, see Krom, *Archaeological description of Bārābuḍur*, pp. 17, 18, and for Yakṣas generally in Java, see Stutterheim’s review of Yakṣas, in *Djawā*, 9e Jaargang, No. 4 en 5, 1929, pp. 283, 284.

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PAGE 9, for the whole of the last paragraph, substitute: The case of Hāritī or Hāritī is too well known to need a long discussion. The best and fullest account occurs in the *Saṃyuktavastu*, Ch. XXXI (see Peri, N., *Hāritī, la Mère-de-Démons*, B. É. F. E. O., XVII, iii, 1917). We get the following genealogy:

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Before her birth as a Yakṣī, Abhirati had been a herdsman’s wife in Rājagṛha. Because she had been required to dance at a festival while pregnant, she conceives the desire to avenge herself; and now, despite the protests of Sātagiri, she constantly devours the children of Rājagṛha. The people make offerings to appease her; these consist of food, perfumes, flowers, cleansing and decorating the town, and making music, but matters are not improved. Then the guardian of Rājagṛha makes it generally known by sending dreams that the only help is to be had from the Buddha. The latter hides Abhirati’s youngest child under his begging bowl; she is distracted by the loss, and searches in vain. The Buddha points out to her the moral, converts her, restores the child, and promises that offerings of food shall be regularly made to her in the monasteries, of which she becomes the protectress.

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Ī Tsing mentions that Hāritī’s image used to be painted in Indian monasteries near the refectory door, though this does not seem to have been *de rigueur*. The *Saṃyuktavastu* mentions only paintings of Yakṣas to be thus made. Hāritī is said to have given her children to the Saṃgha; but they had to receive food at other than the regular hours, and even unclean food.

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As a popular divinity the converted Hāritī was extensively worshipped as a giver of children; we may say, that having had her complex cured by the great master of psychology, she reverts to the normal. Examples are cited by Peri, *loc. cit.*, pp. 65, 66; and according to M. Foucher’s observations (B. É. F. E. O., I, p. 342, and *Sur la frontière Indo-Afghane*, pp. 194-197) her cult in this sense still survives amongst the Muhammadans of the North-West.

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The monastic offerings seem to have been made originally on an altar set before painted icons of Hāritī and Āṭavaka (Ālavaka) placed within the refectory; later upon an altar out of doors. It is particularly interesting to find, though only from a late Chinese source (*Peri, loc. cit.*, pp. 55, 56) that this external altar was made of stone in the form of a lotus flower, expanded towards the sky, and with its smooth round center serving as a table; because precisely such altars have been found in Ceylon (*Colombo Museum Guide*, Pl. III; here Pl. VI, 2).

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It will be observed that in the case of Abhirati, an evil wish conceived when a human being is fulfilled in the person of a malevolent Yakkhinī; exactly parallel to this is the case of the cannibal Yakkhinī of the *Ayoghara Jātaka*, No. 510, where the barren co-wife of the king of Benares, jealous of her fertile sister, prays to be able to devour the latter’s children, and when reborn as a Yakkhinī is able to fulfil this desire.

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PAGE 9, note 1, add: Haribhadra, II, 8, 2 (Leumann, E., *Die Avaśyaka-Erzählungen*, Leipzig, 1897) tells a story in which a Yakṣa bestows on a human artist the ability to depict the whole of a figure, though only the smallest part of the body may have been actually seen (*ex pede Herculem!*).

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Cf. also the story of the production of a simulacrum of the Buddha by Māra at the request of Upagupta, *Divyāvadāna*, LXXVII and *Aśokavadāna*, VII (see my *Origin of the Buddha image*, p. 42, and Pryzuski, J., *Aṣokavadāna*, 1923, p. 361).

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PAGE 10, second paragraph, add: Another Asamukhī is represented amongst the rocks of the Inda-sāla guha on the Mathurā lintel, B 208 in the Lucknow Museum, here obviously only as a “part of the scenery.”

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Cf. the old legends of the mare forms of Saraṇyu and Vāc (Keith, *Rel. and Phil. of the Veda*, pp. 198, 199).

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PAGE 10, note 3: in Bāṇa’s *Kādambarī*, 240, 241, Kinnaras haunting the forest are described as horse-faced. Generally speaking, however, both in literature and art, Kinnaras are of the siren type.

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PAGE 11, line 4, add fresh paragraph:

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The *Milindapañha* (191) has a list of cults, mentioning followers (*gaṇas*) of Maṇibbhadda, Puṇṇabhadda, Candima, Surya, Siri-devata, Kali-devata (v. 1, Kālī), Siva, and Vasudeva (v. 1, Vāsudeva), adding that “the secrets of each of these sects are handed on in the sect itself, and kept hidden from all others.” The Simhalese commentary calls the followers of these divinities *bhaktas*. In the *Niddesa* (*Culla-Niddesa*, pp. 173, 174) list of theistic cults, Maṇibbhadda-deva is mentioned with Puṇṇabhadda-deva, Yakkhas generally, and Mahārājas (Regents); all four of the latter are Yakṣas at Bharhut. Yakṣas are mentioned in lists of deities in the *Māitri Upaniṣad*, I, 4, and vii, 6 and 8. In the *Kāuṭilīya Arthaśāstra*, Ch. 25, there are to be shrines (*koṣṭhaka*) for various deities, including Vaiśravaṇa, within the city (but *koṣṭhaka* in this sense is unparalleled and perhaps granaries for the storage of grain from temple villages is really meant).

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PAGE 12, note 2, after Agni, add: as Śiva. There is also a goat-faced form of Skanda, connected with the procreation of children (Hopkins, *Epic Mythology*, pp. 229, 230). For Skanda as a phallic deity, cf. Meyer, J. J., *Sexual life in ancient India*, pp. 560, 561.

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PAGE 13, line 17, add new paragraph: In the Jātakas, the Bodhisattva is very often born as a tree-spirit. who displays characteristic virtues; but the tree-spirit in such cases is always called a *Devatā*, the Buddhist tendency being to restrict the designation *Yakkha* to demons, although there are many places where *Devatā* and *Yakkha* are synonymous, *e. g.*, Jat. No. 347. *Deva* and *Yakkha* are distinguished in Jat. IV, 107: but Sakka (the Bodhisattva) takes the form of a *Yakkha* and appearing to his former wife teaches her the law. In S. N. I, p. 54, *yakkha* = *devaputta*.

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PAGE 13, note 1, add: In the *Sutasoma Jātaka* (for an illustration see my *Mediaeval Sinhalese art*, figs. 151, 152, here pl. 25, fig. 4), and corresponding passage of the *Dhammapada Atthakathā* (2, 14 f., = Book V, story 1) the non-cannibal character of a tree-spirit is very strongly emphasized; for when a king mistakenly attempts to offer human sacrifices to the tree, the *rukkha-devatā* exerts himself to the utmost to avert the catastrophe. Similarly in Jātaka No. 9. Cf. Sāta's objection to Abhirati's behavior, *supra*, p. 5.

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It is also to be observed that the Bodhisattva, whose births are always favorable, is frequently represented in the Jātakas as having been born as a tree-spirit, and then often as behaving with great magnanimity.

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PAGE 15, transfer paragraph following line 28 ("In the . . . . exhausted") to page 14, after line 17, adding: We have in Jātaka No. 473, and in the case of Trikoṭṭi-Boyu just cited, specific examples of Yakṣas reborn as men. In fact, the idea of alternate human and spirit birth—the idea, in fact, of *saṃsāra*—seems to be inseparably bound up with the Yakṣa theology.

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Insert new paragraphs in place of the one transferred: In Hsüan Tsang's translation of the *Mahā-vibhāṣa-śāstra* (cited by Peri, in B. E. F. E. O., XVII, iii, p. 32) the Yakṣa Madhusugandha says, "In my former life I was always your friend. Now I am born amongst the divine company of the Four Mahārājas. I live on the gate Jivaka and protect the people."

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In the *Vidhurapaṇḍita Jātaka*, No. 545, the king's mother at the time of his last birth but one previous to the present had been his guardian angel (*ārakkha-devatā*) and now again aids him in the same capacity.

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The case of the Yakṣa Sāta, who in the Hāritī legend as related in the *Saṃyuktavastu*, Ch. XXXI (Peri, *loc. cit.*, pp. 3 f.) protected the people of Rājagṛha, and after his death was succeeded by his son Sātagiri in the same benevolent capacity, is especially significant, because the functions involved in protection are given in unusual detail (they are similar to those which might be expected to be fulfilled by Indra himself, or which result from the virtue of a king). Sāta protected Bimbisāra and all his house, and it is by Sāta's grace that rain fell in due season, plants flourished, lakes were full, and there was no famine in the land; he protected, too, the ascetics, Brahmans, the poor, the orphans and the merchants who flocked to the prosperous land of Magadha.

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PAGE 15, note 1, fourth line, after -mentary, add: also Jātaka, VI, 411; and Uvāsaga Dasāo, VII, 187, where the deva is sa-khinkiṇiyaim, explained by Hemacandra as meaning “wearing a girdle set with small bells.”

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PAGE 16, after the last line, fresh paragraph: We have cited above two particular instances of Yakṣa dvārapālas or guardians of gates. And as we know, Yakṣas are constantly represented in this capacity, on either side of the entrance to a shrine. It may be assumed that practically every building had to be protected by a spirit guardian. But accident could not always be relied on, and it is evident that the necessity for providing such guardians underlies an old form of human sacrifice which has survived, in tradition, into modern times. That human beings have been sacrificed and laid in the foundations of buildings is well known. It was popularly believed that such sacrifices were made when the Hooghly Bridge was built; and a reviewer of my Yakṣas (Modern Review, Nov., 1928) remarks that in Bengālī legends misers are said to entomb little boys alive, and “the boy is presumed to take the form of a Yakṣa—known as a Yakṣa in Bengal—and stand guard over the treasure.” Cf. Crooke, W., Popular religion and folk-lore of northern India, pp. 237 ff., and Index; and Bates, Hindī Dictionary, s. v. jak. An instructive early example is found in Jātaka IV, 246 (No. 481): “A great gate (dvāra) is possessed and guarded by great spirits (devatā). A Brahman . . . must be killed, his flesh and blood must be offered as a bali, and his body laid beneath, and the gate raised upon it.”

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PAGE 17, first paragraph, add: In Jātaka No. 398 the Yakkha Aṅgulimāla, originally a tree-dwelling cannibal (it is interesting to observe that the shadow of the tree is the limit of his power), when converted and reformed, is “given a seat” (nisīdipetvā) at the city gate; this most likely implies the establishment of a shrine and statue, and perhaps a daily cult, but might only mean the planting of a tree and setting up of an altar. Cf. Jātaka I, 169, where the devatā of a banyan tree at the gate of a village receives bloody offerings.

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PAGE 17, line 15, add: Quintus Curtius (VIII, 9), speaks of capital punishment inflicted for injury done to a sacred tree.

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PAGE 18, after line 1, add: Patañjali, commenting on Pāṇini II, 2, 3, 4, refers to the sounding of musical instruments at gatherings in the temples (prāsāda) of Dhanapati (Kubera), (Bala-) Rāma, and Keśava (cited, Bhandarkar, Sir R. G., Vaiṣṇavism . . . , p. 13). It would seem evident that the Besnagar kalpa-vṛkṣa (here pl. I), a banyan tree with pots and bags of money, and a lotus and conch exuding coins, at its roots, must have been the capital of the dhvaja-stambha of a temple of Kubera.

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PAGE 18, line 2 from bottom, for pediments read: tympanums.

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PAGE 19, note 4, add: The Āupapātika or Ovavāiya Sūtra, may be dated about the second century B. C. (Barnett, Hindu gods and heroes, p. 91).

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PAGE 19, note 5: for court read caurī.

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PAGE 20, note 3, add: See also my Picture showmen, in Indian Hist. Qtly. V, 1929.

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PAGE 22, last paragraph (“Another story . . . Mahābrahmā”), transfer to top of page 26.

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PAGE 23, line 23, delete (uttarasīsakam).

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PAGE 23, after line 37, add: The prevalence of Yakṣa cults in Magadha is further indicated in Jātaka 307, where the Bodhisattva being born as a palāsa-rukkha-devatā, deity of a palāsa-tree, it is remarked “at that time all the inhabitants of Benares were devoted to the worship (maṅgalikā) of such devatās, and constantly engaged in religious offerings and the like (balikaraṇ-ādīsu).” A similar statement is made in the Dummedha Jātaka, No. 50, and here the Bodhisattva seeing a crowd of worshippers with bloody offerings at a Banyan tree, “praying to the devatā who had been reborn in that tree to grant them sons and daughters, honor and wealth, according to their hearts desire,” himself draws near and behaves as a worshipper (pūjetvā), offering perfumes and flowers, lustration (abhiṣeka), circumambulates (padakkhiṇaṁ katvā) and so honors the devatā, though actually only with a view to the ultimate substitution of a higher faith for that of the popular tree-cult.

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Again, in Jātaka No. 347, with reference to the past, we find “at that time men made bali offerings to the Devatās. The Bodhisattva forbade the killing of animals for these offerings; then the Yakṣas, losing their balikamma, were enraged.” As in so many other cases, so here Devatā = Yakkha.

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PAGE 24, after first paragraph: The problem of the relation of a tree-spirit to a tree is of some interest. With very rare exceptions it is a spirit in the tree, not the tree itself that wills and acts, as explained in Milindapañha, IV, 3, 20: “ ‘the aspen tree conversed with Bhāradvāja.’ But that last is said, O king, by a common form of speech. For though a tree, being unconscious, cannot talk, yet the word ‘tree’ is used as a designation of the dryad who dwells therein, and in that sense ‘the tree talks’ is a well-known expression.” In general, the life of the tree-spirit is independent of that of the tree. Nothing is commoner, when trees are to be cut down, than a request to the tree-spirit to move elsewhere, the request being accompanied by offerings. In the Māyāmataya it is said that a branch of the tree should be broken off, laid on the ground, dragged away and placed under another tree; evidently to provide the spirit with a necessary connecting link. Tree spirits, however, in the Jātakas and elsewhere are often spoken of as leaving their trees temporarily and appearing elsewhere on various occasions, so that they cannot be regarded as inseparably attached to their homes. On the other hand, in Jātaka 398, the domain of a tree-spirit seems to be limited to the area covered by the shadow of the tree. Gifts are placed on trees, or on the altar at the foot of a tree. In consecrating trees or groves, the adhibasa (invocation) ceremony is performed on stone platforms below them (Agni Purāṇa LXX).

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To find a Nāga, instead of a Yakṣa, as a rukkha-devatā, as in the Mahāvaṇija Jātaka, No. 493, is altogether exceptional.

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PAGE 24, after second paragraph, add: Offerings to Yakṣas are generally called bali, and although this term is used equally of offerings made to all the gods, and also to the Manes, it is to be understood, when specially called an offering to All Beings or All Souls (*sarvātmabhūti*), as in Manu, III, 91, as especially intended for the Yakṣas. In *Mahāvaṃsa*, XXXVI, 82, f., the cannibal Yakkha Ratakkhi is converted, and *bali* offerings are allotted to him at the entrances to villages. *Bhūtayajña* would appear to be the same thing as *bali*.

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PAGE 24, note 2, add: Barua’s identification of Yakṣa shrines with hero mounds (I. H. Q., II, 1926, p. 22) is similarly mistaken; so too de la Vallée Poussin, in *L’Inde aux temps des Mauryas*, pp. 149, 150. On Yakṣa caityas see also Chanda, Mem. A. S. I., 30, pp. 3 ff. Cf. also *Atharva Veda*, IX, 1, the word *cāy*.

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PAGE 25, line 10, after Piśācas, read: in Jātaka No. 353 the Yakkha of a banyan tree receives bloody offerings.

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PAGE 25, line 13, add footnote to Ajaṇṭā: * See Goloubew, Ars Asiatica, X, pp. 19-20.

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PAGE 25, after line 30, add: In Haribhadra’s *Āvaśyaka-ṭīkā*, II, 8, 2 ff. the Jakkha Surappia (Surapriya) has a temple at Ayodhyā; the image must be repainted annually, and if this is neglected, he inflicts a pestilence on the people.

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PAGE 26, story of Buddhi and Siddhi, add note: Cf. *Maṇimekhalai*, Bk. XXII (transl. by S. K. Aiyangar, p. 169).

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PAGE 27, line 2, after “Mayaṇa,” read: (= Kāmadeva).

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PAGE 27, after line 3, fresh paragraph: In the same book, in the Story of Bambhadatta (Jacobi, p. 12, Meyer, p. 41) a Yakṣa, gratified by a woman’s devotion (*bhatti* = *bhakti*) brings about her marriage with king Bambhadatta.

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PAGE 27, after second paragraph, add: In Dandin’s *Daśakumāracarita* Prince Arthapāla becomes the husband of Tārāvalī, daughter of Māṇibhadra.

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PAGE 27, line 29, for “is Vāsudeva,” read: “are Śiva and Vāsudeva.”

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PAGE 27, last line, add footnote to Kings: * All four are called Yakṣhas in the Bharhut inscriptions.

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PAGE 28, line 3, insert: Mahāvīra is called Bhagavat, in the *Āupapātika Sūtra*, passim.

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PAGE 30, note 1, add: On Vajrapāṇi see also Spooner, E. C., *The Fravashi of Gautama*, J. R. A. S., 1916. But Mrs. Spooner is quite wrong in thinking that “the conception of the guardian angel is un-Indian.” Not to mention other examples we have the very word, *ārakkha-devatā* in Jātaka, V, 429 and VI, 281; in the former case a father, in the latter a mother, reborn in the spirit world, *i. e.*, as a Yakṣa or Yakṣī, protects a child still living. An identification of Vajrapāṇi with the Buddha’s “external soul” is quite impossible.

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PAGE 30, the note beginning “Waddell” should be numbered “4” with reference to “Lag-na-rdo-rje.”

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PAGE 31, note 1, add: Excellent representations of Vajrapāṇi attendant on Buddha will be found on the large slab from Nāgārjunikoṇḍa, here plate 3, and on a slab illustrating the Marriage of Nanda, of the same Amarāvatī schools, both now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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PAGE 31, note 2, add: A more nearly complete Kuṣāṇa statue of Vajrapāṇi from Mathurā is illustrated in Cunningham, Archaeological Survey Reports, III, pl. XI, d.

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PAGE 32, line 6. I use the designation Vṛkṣakā (= Vṛddhikā, Vārkṣī), of epic origin (Hopkins, *Epic Mythology*, p. 7) as most literally descriptive, and at the same time exactly equivalent to dryad. But Dr. Vogel¹ has recently shown that the word *śālabhañjikā*, “she who plucks *śāla* flowers” was, or at least became, a technical term denoting representations of female types standing under trees, and was also the name of a *śāla*-plucking festival in which women climbed the trees and plucked the flowers. Of course, it does not follow that the *śālabhañjikā* in art always or even often stands for a human figure. There is every reason to suppose, that the Vṛkṣakā is usually a Yakkhinī; but *Mahābhārata*, III, 265, 1-3a, “Who art thou that, bending down the branch of the kadamba tree, shinest lonely in the hermitage, sparkling like a flame of fire at night, shaken by the breeze, oh thou of fair brows? Exceeding fair art thou, yet fearest naught here in the forest. Art thou a Devatā, a Yakṣī, a Dānavī, an Apsaras, or a fair Daitya girl, or a lovely maiden of the Nāga king, or a Night-wanderer (Rākṣasī) in the wood” shows that the type could be identified in many ways.

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¹ *The woman and tree, or śālabhañjikā, in Indian literature and art*, Acta Orientalia, VII, 1928.

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Evidently *Yakṣas*, Pl. 21, fig. 6, previously identified only as a scene from the Buddha’s life illustrates the story of the *śālabhañjikā* festival at Śrāvastī, Story No. 53 of the *Avadāna Śataka* (Feer, p. 207, also cited by Vogel; and my *Notes sur la sculpture bouddhique*, Rev. des Arts Asiatiques, V, 1928).

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PAGE 32, line 15, after “charm” add: cf. “the girdle of Aditi,” IV. 1, 5.

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PAGE 32, line 16, add: or fish-tailed elephants or horses; the significance of these riverine vehicles will be discussed below, p. 47 f.

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PAGE 32, after line 22, add: A story is told in the *Mahābhārata* of a mother and daughter who embrace two trees, and thus become the mothers of Viśvamitra and Jamadagni (Hopkins, *Epic Mythology*, p. 183). On trees granting offspring to women see also Bloch, Th., *Notes on Bōdhgayā*, A. S. I., A. R., 1908-09, p. 142; Meyer, J. J., *Sexual life in ancient India*, pp. 156-8; and p. 12 below.

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In the *Hatthipāla Jātaka*, No. 509, a poor woman has seven sons, and asked by whom she had them, she replies, pointing to the banyan tree by the city gate, “I offered prayer to the deity who inhabits this tree, and he answered me by giving these boys.” The translations err in making the Rukkhadevatā feminine.

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In the *Dummedha Jātaka*, No. 50, people worship the Devatā of a banyan tree (? Kubera) for “sons and daughters, honor and wealth.”

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In Bāṇa’s *Kādambarī*, 134, Queen Vilāsavatī, desiring a child, performs a variety of ceremonies, amongst others “with a sunwise turn, she worshipped the pippala and other trees to which honour was wont to be shown.”

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In the *Kathāsaritsāgara*, Ch. CV, offerings of wine, flesh, and other dainties are to be made to the Yakṣas on the wedding day. The bride here says to her husband, “Before I married you, I prayed to the Yakṣas to enable me to obtain you. . . .”

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PAGE 32, line 32, after “embrace,” add: *Atharva Veda*, V, 5, 3 “Tree after tree thou climbest, like a lustful girl”; and *Jātaka*, V. 215, “When will Tarita’s daughter . . . cling to me, e’en as a forest-creeper to some forest-tree?”

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PAGE 33, note 1, third paragraph, add: Cf. *upaddha sarīram*, describing the manifestation of a *devatā* living in a royal umbrella (*Jātaka*, VI, 376).

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PAGE 37, note 1, add: Brown, W. N., *The Indian and Christian miracles of walking on the water*, Chicago, 1928.

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PAGE 38, line 8, image of “Manasā Devī”: Mr. Canda (A. S. I., A. R., 1922-23, p. 165) reads the inscription as “(This image of the) Yakṣī Lāyāva has been caused to be made for the sons of Sā, and made by Nāka, pupil of Kunika”; in this case Kunika becomes the name of a sculptor, not of a Yakṣa.

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PAGE 41, description of plate 16, 2: more probably Agni, cf. similar figure with ram vehicle on a pilaster of the Rāj Rāni temple, Bhuvanēśvara.

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PAGE 42, plate 21, fig. 3. Now in the University Museum, Pennsylvania.

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PAGE 42, plate 21, fig. 6, read: The Śālabhañjikā festival at Śrāvastī, illustrating the *Avadāna Śataka*, Story No. 53; see Feer, L., *Avadānaśatakā*, p. 207, and my *Notes sur la sculpture bouddhique*, Rev. des Arts Asiatiques, V, 1928. In Pañcasikha’s song in the *Sakka-pañha Suttanta* (DN., II, 267 = *Dialogues of the Buddha*, II, 302) we have an allusion to the worship of the sāl tree in full blossom “for offspring.” For the fertility significance and pre-Buddhist character of this festival see also J. B. O. R. S., XIV, p. 69. Vogel (*The Woman and Tree or śālabhañjikā in Indian literature and art*, Acta Orientalia, VII, 1929) has shown that the architectural term *śālabhañjikā*, applicable to “woman and tree” figures (e. gt. Yakṣas, I, Pl. 20, 1) is derived from the name of this festival.

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PAGE 42, plate 22, fig. 1, for *vṛksakā* read *vṛkṣakā*.

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PAGE 42, description of pl. 22, 4, add: Height 3' 2½". Vogel, *Catalogue of the Archaeological Museum, Mathurā*, p. 90.

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PAGE 43, Appendix, V, add: In Haribhadra’s *Sanatkumāracarita*, 514, *Mayaṇa’s āyayaṇa* is likewise in a grove. In the *Daśakumāracarita*, Ch. V, the maidens of Avantī worship (*arcayanti*) Manobhava (= Mayaṇa, Kāmadeva), laying their offerings of perfumes, flowers, turmeric, and Chinese silk on the level sand (*saikata-tale*) in the cool shade of a mango-tree.

2. The Water Cosmology

Introduction

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In *Yakṣas*, I, and the addenda prefixed to the present discussion, there has been accumulated a mass of material sufficient to show the antiquity and popularity of the Yakṣa cults in India, and to establish the general character of the Yakṣa type, which includes universal deities like Kubera, Kāmadeva, and Śrī, tutelary deities of kingdoms or clans, such as Sātagiri and Śākya-vardhana, and also more localised and generally unnamed male tree spirits and dryads whose power does not extend beyond the shadow of the tree which is their abode. We have recognized that all these Yakṣas, great or small, are vegetation spirits directly controlling, and bestowing upon their *bhaktas*, fertility and wealth, or to use a single word, abundance.

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What we have not yet emphasized, though it has been indicated, is the intimate connection of the Yakṣas with the waters. For example, Kubera’s inexhaustible treasuries are a lotus and a conch, innumerable Yakṣīs have a *makara* or other fish-tailed animal as their vehicle, Kāmadeva the *makara* as his cognizance, the greater tutelary Yakṣas control the rains essential to prosperity, and in the earliest mythology “that germ which the waters held first and in which all the gods exist” rose like a tree “from the navel of the unborn,” who in the oldest passage is Varuṇa and in the *Atharva-Veda* is called a Yakṣa; moreover, in the “decorative” art,¹ vegetation is represented indifferently as springing either (1) from the mouth or navel of a Yakṣa, or (2) from the open jaws of a *makara* or other fish-tailed animal, or (3) from a “brimming vessel,” or (4) from a conch, but never directly from any symbol representing the earth.

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¹ Indian “decorative art” is not like modern ornament a kind of upholstery, but explicitly significant: as remarked by Kramrisch (*Grundzüge der indischen Kunst*, p. 83, “Das (indische) Muster ist so weit vom Ornament entfernt wie der Landschaft von naturalistischer Beschreibung.”) Even if the significance is partially forgotten in later periods, it is never wholly lost. Henceforward we shall usually speak of the decorative art by the names of its chief component parts, viz. the Animal Style, the Plant Style, and the Geometric Style. Each of these styles is a definite iconography, or at least tends to be recognizable as such to the extent that our knowledge advances.

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Yakṣas, then, are the Lords of Life, comparable to the Tuatha de Danann of Irish fairy mythology; they are also deities closely connected with the waters, though their habitat is terrestrial. These two essentials of their nature are inseparably connected. *A priori*, it might have been supposed that the Nāgas, who are water deities, and who control the activity of the waters, should have been the gods of abundance; but they are not, as the Yakṣas are, “worshipped by those desiring children.” The fact is, that the Yakṣas control, not so much the waters as mere waters, but that essence (*rasa*) in the waters which is one with the sap in trees, with the *amṛta* or elixir of the Devas, especially Agni, with the Soma, and with the seed in living beings.

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The Yakṣa is by far a greater, more mysterious, and one may add potentially a spiritual power far more significant than the Nāga or dragon.¹ It is the object of the present work to discover (in the original meaning of the word) the importance of the Yakṣas in what has often been vaguely referred to as a Life Cult, to suggest that this life cult, with which is also connected the worship of the Great Mother, may have been the primitive religion of India, and to show that the plant style is actually nothing more nor less than the iconography of the Water Cosmology.

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¹ Both are guardians of rain and wealth: but there seems to be indicated an original differentiation in this sense, that the Yakṣas are bestowing, the Nāgas withholding deities—perhaps a primitive dualism of good and evil.

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The term “Water Cosmology” was first, I think, employed by Hume, in the Introduction to his *Thirteen principal Upanishads*, pp. 10-14, with reference to such passages as *Bṛhadāraṇyaka*, 5, 5, “in the beginning this world was just water,” and 3, 6, 1, “all this world is woven, warp and woof, on water,” and *Kauṣītaki*, 1, 7, where Brahman declares “the waters, verily, indeed, are my world.”

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A belief in the origin of life in the waters was common to many ancient cultures, and must have arisen very naturally in the case of peoples, like those of the Nile, the Euphrates, or the Indus Valley, amongst whom water, in the form either of seasonal rains or of ever-flowing rivers was the most obvious prerequisite of vegetative increase; nor can the belief be regarded as in any way unreasonable. Taken in a purely physical sense, it may indeed be called a fair anticipation of modern scientific ideas.² In the Vedas, the belief appears in the form of an old popular theory, for which are substituted the successively more philosophical concepts of a Space Cosmology, of a belief in an origin of the world in Non-being, in an origin of the world from Being, and finally in the conception of Brahman (the Absolute) as world-ground. The Water Cosmology, it is true, persists side by side with, and linked with these deeper views, even in post-Vedic literature; but it is not typically a creation of the Vedas, and seems to belong to an even older stratum of ideas than that which is developed in the Vedas. If the operations of the powers of vegetative increase are not fully explained in the Vedas, it is because they belong to an older, pagan, fairy mythology, and the Vedas themselves seek to attain their ends rather by sacrifices (*yajña*) to celestial powers than by the worship (*pūjā*) of localised personal and terrestrial deities or any attempt to stimulate their activity by suggestive representations in art.¹ The Water Cosmology conceives of certain powers of abundance who direct, or at least symbolise or represent the operations of life as it wells upward from its source in the waters, and of a supreme deity, Varuṇa; but in itself, it can scarcely be regarded as a theology, for it does not originally conceive of a personal consciousness underlying the creation of the world. As remarked by Rönnow² “Der primitive Mensch denkt sich überhaupt keine konstante Personification des Wassers; es ist an und für sich heilig und von *mana* erfüllt” and precisely for this reason “jedoch bald dieses, bald jenes Tier od. dgl. ein Repräsentant der dem Wasser innewohnenden Kraft werden kann.” Thus a tendency to use abstract, non-anthropomorphic symbolism, which has so often been regarded as of distinctively northern, Aryan, or nomad origin, really inheres in the most ancient modes of thought.

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² A. Havelock Ellis, *Studies in the psychology of sex*, Vol. VII, Ch. VII, “Undinism.” The *rasa* theory, one might say, presents a kind of analogy to our views about vitamines. Havelock Ellis, *ib.*, 386, speaks of a “premonition of the modern scientific view of the pelagic origin of life”. While there is much that is suggestive in the whole chapter on “Undinism”, it may be remarked that scarcely anything in the Indian tradition seems to imply a connection of the cult of the waters and the vesical stream; while the origin of fountains, in the Mesopotamian tradition seems to be connected only with the symbol of the flowing vase (see Heuzy, *Origines orientales de l'art*, pp. 170, 171) but also Albright, *Some cruces in the Langdon Epic*, J. A. O. S., 39, 1919, esp. p. 70. Cf. Bolton,

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¹ Or only in such cases as that of the pot dance of the maidens round the Mārjālīya fire, after the horse sacrifice, for which an indigenous origin is plausible. Localised deities would not be expected amongst a nomad people, cf. Keith, *Religion and philosophy of the Veda*, p. 184, note 4. Further the natural emphasis of nomadic people is laid on herds of cattle and on horses; that of settled agricultural communities, probably already practicing irrigation long before the advent of the Aryans, upon water and plants.

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² Trita Aptya, 1927, p. 6.

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F. E., *Hydro-psychoses*, Am. Journ. Psychology, Jan. 1889. But a belief, erotically tinged, that water was the source of all things, has been at one time or another current in all the great civilisations, and traces of such a belief persist even in modern European folklore. “The image of Aphrodite rising from the sea is not without scientific justification” (Donnan, in Ann. Rep. Smithsonian Institution, 1929, p. 318).

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There is nothing in this tendency contradictory to the use of the human form, which in the case of the feminine powers of fertility and abundance can be traced far back into prehistoric times. These powers, particularly the nude goddess, the Great Mother, who may be Aditi, and Śrī, who is so very closely connected with the Waters, stand in close relation to the Water Cosmology, and at the same time are represented in the aspect of women. But no stylistic distinction can be made as between this use of the human form, and the use of plant or animal forms; the treatment is equally abstract and symbolic in both cases—there is no intention to reproduce natural appearances. A stylistic distinction, perhaps referable to diversity of ethnic preoccupation, may indeed be drawn between an expressive and an illusionistic art. But Indian art is never illusionistic; it constitutes, in fact, a unity, and all the elements of this unity are congruous and coeval. Even to attempt to distinguish Aryan and Dravidian tendencies may represent in part a false issue.

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That detailed picture of the fairy powers at their procreative work, and of their hierarchy, culminating in the grandiose conception of the Regents of the Four Quarters, which the Vedas fail to give us, is to be found in the explicit formulae of the Plant Style, and incidentally, we may add, in Buddhist and Jaina literature, which, insofar as it refers to non-Buddhist beliefs at all, tells us much more about popular Indian religion than it does about the religion of the Brahmanical philosophers. At the same time, even the Vedic picture of the Water Cosmology and of the plants—"Plants, O ye mothers, I hail ye as goddesses," says the Yajur Veda (IV, 2, 6)—is more vivid and detailed than we might have expected.

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We are then in possession of two distinct sources, each equally permeated through and through by the concepts of the Water Cosmology. One of these is the Vedas; the other the Plant Style in the decorative art of the earliest monuments, and its later and even modern survivals. These two sources are in complete accord. Hitherto, a concentration of attention upon the sectarian, theistic art of India (Vaiṣṇava, Bāuddha, etc.) and upon stylistic development in connection with the cult image only, has obscured the fact that quantitatively speaking, Indian art is to a greater extent than has been supposed, an illustration of Vedic ideas. We have already seen, for example, that in the representation of the abhiṣeka of Śrī the elements of the dogmatic symbolism are far more ancient than the first extant representations.¹ So now it will be found that the special formulae of the Plant Style are only explicable in the light of the innumerable passages in Vedic literature in which the Water Cosmology is referred to. It follows, of course, that the Plant Style did not come into being for the first time about 200 B. C.; but that the Śuṅga reliefs are simply the oldest monuments we possess of what is really a very ancient style. This is not surprising in itself; it is merely a special case of the general argument for the long pre-Maurya antiquity of the earliest Indian animal, plant, geometric, and architectural formulae as met with in Maurya, Śuṅga, and later reliefs.

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¹ See my *Early Indian iconography*, II, *Śrī-Lakṣmī*, in *Eastern Art*, I, 1928, and *Appendix*, ch. II, 1929.

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Iranian cosmology, preserved in the *Zendavesta*, presents us with a body of belief and a type of gods and genii closely related to those of the Water Cosmology in India. Thus Ahura Mazda corresponds to Varuṇa; Anāhita and Ashi, his daughters, present a close analogy with Śrī-Lakṣmī; the Amesha Spentas, especially Haurvatāt and Ameretāt, “ Health ” and “ Immortality,” genii of plants and waters, have much in common with the Yakṣas, and so in another way have the Fravashis, as “ self-like genii ” and guardian angels; Apām Napāt = Apām Napāt; *haoma* = *soma*; *yasna* = *yajña*. It is immaterial for the moment that the ranks of Asura and Deva in Persia and India were reversed. The change took place in India, and Persia preserved what can only be inferred in India from the oldest parts of the Vedas and from survivals in popular belief and art. Actually the *Zendavesta* gives us a better picture of Varuṇa than can be found in the Vedas themselves.¹

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