The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c13.s2.35

v1.c13.s2.35

The idea that there are hostile spirits of the dead, which are the demons of disease and the bringers of ill fortune, is strongly supported by the very widespread belief in modern India that the most of the evil spirits are such souls of the dead, especially of men killed by tigers, or murdered, or who committed suicide through weariness of the misfortunes of life or other similar cause.¹ The idea is proved to have existed for medieval India by the evidence of such tales as that narrated in the Siṁhāsandvātriṁçikā² of a man who was betrayed by his wife and who died for grief at the betrayal, but after death used to come to vex her in punishment for her crime, in the guise of an evil spirit. Earlier evidence is that of the epic which makes out that the men who hate Brahmans in this life become Rākṣasas, perhaps in the Buddhist category of Yama-Rākṣasas, if their character is that they are evil men who become Rākṣaṣas on death.³ The Buddhist literature also knows Yakṣas and Bhūtas who dwell in cemeteries and Yakṣas who live in relic mounds. The Vedic evidence is not conclusive, but it is valuable: in addition to gods who were first men, and to gods by their deeds, who may be deemed to be the spirits of the friendly dead,⁴ we find mention of Dasyus, who, assuming the appearance of ancestors, slip in amongst the ancestors at the funeral feast provided for the latter, and we are told of Asuras and Rakṣases who dwell among the Fathers.⁵ In both cases the evil spirits must be deemed to be such as naturally consort with the spirits of the dead. In yet another passage of the Atharvaveda⁶ some kind of demon which infests the cowstall and the house is addressed with the words ‘whether ye be from the field or sent by men or be children of the Dasyus’, and the last of these conceptions suggests that the demons are conceived as being possibly the souls of the hostile Dasyu. Clearer evidence than this we really could not expect to find: for once the idea of hostile spirits generally was conceived it would be constantly and readily extended. There can be hardly any better example of this than the case of the Asuras: they are not in origin, as we have seen, enemies of the gods at all, but the Brāhmaṇa literature with monotonous regularity presents us with the picture of the gods and the Asuras being in conflict: the concept of the group of Asuras⁷ is thus in the main due to the creative activity of the religious consciousness of the priests. Older than this group is that of the Rakṣases, who become, after the invention of the concept of the Asuras, more specifically the enemies of men, but who are also enemies of the gods themselves.