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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c23.s2: § 2. The Enemies of Man

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c23.s2

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§ 2. The Enemies of Man

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It is impossible, when we deal with the lesser demons of the Vedic religion, to ascertain with any reasonable certainty the origin of the different conceptions exhibited, for the lack of clearness of the notices given in our sources is in accordance with the fact that the demons are objects of aversion, and that therefore they are not minutely described, but only indicated in vague terms. It is probably true that in many cases the idea of such spirits is born of the idea of the hostile dead,⁶ or again the demons are the product of independent creative thought, corresponding to the ‘abstract’ deities, but they may also often be more naturalistic in their origin. It must be remembered that there are poisonous plants, that waters are often regarded as cruel and dangerous as well as kindly, as in the widespread belief that a river must be propitiated by the life of man at least once a year, that the savage character of the forest creates the view that it is inhabited by a dread spirit, that the hail is regarded as evil, and that trees are awe-inspiring⁷ and sometimes deadly in their fruits. The animatistic growth of such ideas as that of hostile spirits is as natural as the animistic, or the spiritist, but in the case of the demons the distinctions cannot be made with certainty in the confused figures which we find in the literature. Nor in the case of the demons can we overlook the fact that actual men may be included as well as spirits of the dead, and actual animals also be considered a very natural fact.

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⁶ As in Babylonian religion, Farnell, *Greece and Babylon*, p. 206. Cf. Arbman, *Rudra*, p. 169.

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⁷ Cf. Hopkins, *Epic Myth.*, p. 7, n. 3.

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The forms of the demons are conceived either anthropomorphically or theriomorphically, or, and this is a distinction between them and the gods, as compounded of both forms. They are enumerated in groups, but the distinctions between the groups are not carefully drawn, and in addition we have many names of individuals, derived from their activity or appearance, or fancy names, or names perhaps of real enemies.

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The Rakṣases are the most famous of the classes of demons, and occur in the Rigveda upwards of fifty times, nearly always in connexion with the mention of a god who is desired to deal with them. In two hymns¹ the Rakṣases seem to be more precisely defined as Yātus or Yātudhānas, words which denote wizard or sorcerers, and the latter may be regarded as a subdivision of the Rakṣasas, a fact of the utmost importance as showing how important even in the Rigveda was the belief in such beings, many of them probably real men. The Rakṣases are often, as is natural, theriomorphic; they appear as dogs, vultures, owls, and other birds flying about at night;² they can assume the form of husband, brother, or lover,³ and they are a constant peril to the woman in child. In dog or ape form they are ready to attack her;⁴ at the wedding service they prowl around, and small staves are flung in the air to pierce the eyes of the demons.⁵ When they have human forms, they are often hideously deformed, with two mouths, three heads, four eyes, five feet, with feet turned backwards, without fingers, or with horns on their hands, and bear-necked.⁶ Blue, yellow, and green are their colours, and they are not without social organization, having both families and kings:⁷ unlike the gods, they are mortal, and have not won immortality.⁸ They are essentially blood-suckers who seek to enter men, especially by the mouth in the process of eating and drinking, but also by other inferior passages which the gods are therefore besought to protect.⁹ When within they eat the man's or beast's flesh and cause disease;¹⁰ they bring about madness and destroy the power of speech;¹¹ they invade human dwellings¹² and dance around houses in the evening; they make a noise in the forest, pray aloud, or laugh and drink out of skulls as cups,¹³ a point which shows that the ghouls of the places of burial must have contributed an element to the conceptions: in such spirits the idea of the spirits of the dead, especially the dead not duly buried or burnt, and the spirits, which are, like Vāstoṣpati in the house, resident in the place of the dead, must inevitably inextricably combine.

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¹ RV. vii. 104; x. 87. In JB. iii. 266 Ṛkṣa appears in the sense of Rakṣas.

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² RV. vii. 104. 18, 22.

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³ RV. x. 162. 5.

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⁴ AV. iv. 37. 11.

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⁵ MGS. i. 4. 10.

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⁶ AV. viii. 6; HGS. ii. 3. 7.

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⁷ AV. v. 22. 12; HGS. ii. 3. 7.

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⁸ AV. vi. 32. 2.

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⁹ AV. v. 29. 6–8; viii. 6. 3.

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¹⁰ RV. x. 87. 16, 17; viii. 60. 20; AV. vii. 76. 4.

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¹¹ AV. vi. 11. 1, 3; HGS. i. 15. 5.

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¹² Kauç. cxxxv. 9.

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¹³ AV. viii. 6. 10, 11, 14; HGS. ii. 3. 7.

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Like most evil spirits, the Rakṣases love the night,¹⁴ especially the night when there is no moon, for in the east the sun disperses them, and in this connexion with night they are akin to the souls of the dead. Hence, it seems, a falling meteor¹ is considered to be the embodiment of a Rakṣas.

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¹⁴ RV. vii. 104. 18.

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¹ Kauç. cxxvi. 9.

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As is natural in a priestly collection, we hear much of the attacks of the Rakṣases on the sacrifice: with the Yātus they taint it and throw it into confusion.² On the other hand, the sorcerer can use a spell, and by the Rakṣases and the Yātudhānas ruin the sacrifice of his enemy.³ In order to obtain the advantage of sacrifices, the evil spirits often assume the form of souls of ancestors and come to the offerings for the dead.⁴ But the demons can be yoked by a skilled man to his own ends; in the Atharvaveda we find that demons are invited to attack the man who sends them, and the later texts recognize the need of providing against the attacks of sorcerers.⁵ In these cases and for the protection of the offering the essential aider is Agni, the burner, who therefore represents the primitive and universal belief in the power of fire to repel hostile demons. An isolated mention is made of Kubera Vaiçravaṇa as their king.

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² RV. vii. 104. 18, 21; x. 182. 3.

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³ AV. vii. 70. 2.

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⁴ AV. xviii. 2. 28; Caland, *Altind. Ahnenkult*, pp. 3 ff.

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⁵ RV. vi. 62. 9; vii. 104. 23; viii. 82. 20; AV. ii. 24; TS. ii. 2. 3. 2.

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The meaning of the term is doubtful: the root ‘protect’ is the obvious one, in which case the word must apparently mean that which is to be guarded against, unless we suppose that they are given a good-sounding name, in order to make them good. In the sense ‘injure’, there is little authority for *rakṣ*. Bergaigne⁶ thinks that they are named as guardians of celestial treasure, who being greedy are hated, for which view the parallel of the Gandharvas and the Soma may be cited, as well as the fact that Kubera is their king. Bartholomae connects Rakṣas with the root seen in Greek ἐρεχθεῖν.

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⁶ *Rel. Véd.* ii. 218.

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The Piçācas are only once mentioned in the Rigveda,⁷ where Indra is invoked to crush the yellow-peaked, watery, Piçācī and every Rakṣas. In the later Saṁhitās they figure, however, in the plural, and they are opposed to the Fathers, as the Asuras to the gods, and the Rakṣases to men, but not consistently.⁸ They may, however, have been supposed to be specially of the ethnic type of theriomorphic ghouls of the dead, as they have the name *kravyād*, ‘eaters of raw flesh’.⁹ But they also are treated as eating away the flesh of a sick man, while again they appear as infesting human dwellings and villages, and even as will-o’-the-wisps.¹⁰ The view that these Piçācas are really, or originally, a special tribe who were addicted to cannibalism, and who were the speakers of the Prākrit known to the grammarians as Paiçācī, has been put forward of late, but has no probability, the reverse process being much more likely.¹¹ Similarly, the idea that the Rakṣases are originally conceived as hostile aborigines cannot be accepted as explaining the class generally, but merely as one element in the conception.¹ Charpentier² finds in the Piçācas the souls of the dead conceived as glow-worms. The Brāhmaṇas³ tell a curious tale of a Piçācī who married the Ikṣvāku King, Tryaruṇa, and dulled his fire, until the priest Vṛṣa by a rite had her burned up.

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⁷ i. 133. 5.

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⁸ TS. ii. 4. 1. 1.

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⁹ AV. v. 29. 9.

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¹⁰ AV. iv. 36. 8; 20. 9; 37. 10.

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¹¹ Grierson, ZDMG. lxvi. 68.

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¹ Macdonell and Keith, *Vedic Index*, ii. 516.

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² *Kleine Beiträge zur indoiranischen Mythologie* (1911). But see Winternitz, *VOJ.* xxvii. 229–32.

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³ PB. xiii. 3. 11–13; JB. iii. 94–6; Sieg, *Die Sagenstoffe des RV.*, p. 64; Oertel, *JAOS.* xviii. 21 ff.; Oldenberg on RV. v. 2. 1.

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The Arātis, who occur about a dozen times in the Rigveda and frequently later, are clearly abstract deities of illiberality, but clothed with quite a real life in the imagination of the indignant Vedic poet, who asks the gods to overthrow them. The Druhs are found about as often in the Rigveda,⁴ but they are Indo-Iranian, the Avestan being *druj*, and, like all the older conceptions, are not living features of the religion, being merely vaguely conceived as injurious spirits. The Kimīdins as a pair of demons occur already in the Rigveda,⁵ contrary to the more normal practice of grouping the demons in sets, perhaps owing to the influence of the dual deities. The names which we have of such Kimīdins, Mroka and Anumroka, Sarpa and Anusarpa, show, however, their entire distinction from the dual deities which have distinct personalities and quite different appellations.⁶

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⁴ Macdonell, *Ved. Myth.*, p. 8.

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⁵ RV. vii. 104. 23; x. 87. 24; Weber, *Ind. Stud.* xiii. 183 ff.

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⁶ AV. ii. 24.

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Among the homes of these spirits, especially probably those of the dead, one is especially noteworthy, the cross way, which is the scene of various magic rites. It is there that evil spirits and disease are banished by the sorcerer; there is performed the spell to find what has been lost, there Rudra is said to dwell, after a death the fire which becomes thus impure is deposited there.⁷ It is doubtful what motive in each case can be seen for the superstition which is world-wide: unquestionably the spirits of the dead are thought to live there, especially perhaps evil spirits, as evil dead are often so buried, but it is possible to find other motives: the cross-roads is the place whence all ways deviate, so that it is the proper centre for a spell to seek for what is lost: or again by depositing there what is impure, the idea may be that the impurity is induced to go one way, the former owner of it another, or the evil which is laid aside may enter into and be taken away by one of the many wayfarers who pass that way.

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⁷ Kauç. xxvi. 30; xxvii. 7; xxx. 18; lii. 14; ÇB. ii. 6. 2. 7; HGS. i. 16. 8; AGS. iv. 6. 3; Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², pp. 269 f.

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One set of demons seems still to show its essential connexion with a natural object, those which are conceived as embodied in plants. Agni and Indra are implored to destroy the demons together with the root,⁸ and the point, or three points, of demons is alluded to: it is natural to assume that the root is the incorporation of the deity, and this view is strengthened by the reference⁹ to those ‘whose god is the root’, an expression which surely denotes that the root was the actual demon, rather than merely that the demon was supposed to have taken up his abode¹ in the root, though the former conception might easily be passing into the latter.

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⁸ RV. iii. 30. 17; x. 87. 19.

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⁹ RV. vii. 104. 24; x. 87. 2, 14.

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¹ Oldenberg, *op. cit.*, p. 268, n. 4; the natural origin of such spirits is seen in Celtic religion; MacCulloch, *Rel. of Anc. Celts*, pp. 173, 185; cf. Farnell, *Greece and Babylon*, pp. 110, 111, 43.

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In the case of the disease demons it is not easy precisely to determine what conception was formed of them. The idea formed of them certainly hovers between the conception of a spirit like Takman, 'fever', who brings the disease, and a more materialistic, or scientific, conception of some substance which carries the disease itself. The constant efforts to drive out diseases by means of spells and sympathetic magic may, according to Oldenberg, fairly be held to contain a more advanced conception of the nature of disease than the more simple concept of a demon disease. But this is not at all clear, unless we accept Oldenberg's animistic views. The real question is whether the demon disease was conceived in the first place abstractly, the disease being caused by a demon, and the demon identified with the disease it caused, or whether the disease was conceived as something real and material, with a life of its own. The latter view seems to accord most with primitive thought, and with the material, if less personal, character of the disease as attacked by the means of the sorcerer in the Atharvaveda, in which, however, constant hints of the personal character are still to be found. The actual signs of the disease, the symptoms visible to the eye, are in the primitive mind the disease itself, which is, as the symptoms come and go, clearly a living entity.

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The demons are not, however, merely repelled by the use of fire, and by many spells; they are actually occasionally propitiated with offerings, as in the case of the Rakṣases and Yātudhānas who are thus treated in the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa,² a fact which may stand in relation with the use which sorcerers were able to make of these spirits. Tricks are also tried to deceive them: thus in the period³ of continence immediately after marriage, there has been seen by Oldenberg⁴ an ingenious device to prevent any hostile action on the part of the demons, whether by attacking the bride or seeking to enjoy her,⁵ and in any case the sympathetic magic of the device is obvious. The practice in the acts of driving away fiends of enumerating as many names as possible is parallel to that of enumerating as many gods in the offerings of the Vaiçvadeva rite in the domestic ritual, and it has preserved to us several lists. To protect the woman in child-birth a fire is lighted,⁶ and the spirits are banned under the names of Çaṇḍa and Marka, Upavīra, Çauṇḍikeya, Ulūkhala, Malimluca, Droṇāsa, Cyavana, Ālikhant, Animiṣa, Kiṁvadanta, Upaçruti, Haryakṣa, Kumbhin, Çatru, Pātrapāṇi, Nṛmaṇi, Hantrīmukha, Sarṣapāruṇa, Cyavana.

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² iii. 4. 1. 5.

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³ Winternitz, *Altind. Hochzeitsrituell*, p. 87; J. J. Meyer, *Das Weib im altindischen Epos*, pp. 235 f.

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⁴ *Rel. des Veda*², p. 273.

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⁵ AV. iv. 37. 11; ÇB. iii. 2. 1. 10.

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⁶ PGS. i. 16. 23; ApGS. xviii. 1; MP. ii. 16. 1 ff. A longer list in HGS. ii. 3. 7; Pramṛçant, Kūṭadanta, Vikleça, Lambastana, Uraspeça, &c.

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Still more interesting is the treatment of a child which has a barking cough;¹ the demon within him is exorcized to let loose the child, being addressed as Kūrkura, good Kūrkura, and doggy; he is assured that Saramā is his mother, Sīsara his father, and the brindled dogs of Yama his brothers: the idea of the demon cough in dog form is perfectly clear: its name is also given as Kumāra. When the man performs the Vaiçvadeva offerings of the domestic ritual, his wife outside the house offers food² to the man, to the woman, to every age, to the white one with black teeth, the lord of bad women, to those who allure her children, whether in the wood or the forest. On the day of the final bath the pupil banishes from him all the evil forms of Agni, ten in number, which he enumerates.³ Demons figure among those to whom he is given in charge by the teacher on his reception.⁴ In the ritual we find in the Taittirīya Āraṇyaka⁵ a list of hideous forms to be driven away from the offering, Viçīrṣṇī, Gṛdhraçīrṣṇī, and so on. The sacrifice is full of all sorts of magic devices to repel the evil spirits, who, on the one hand, are allowed to have offerings of the blood, though only with inaudible words of offering lest the speech of the speaker should become the voice of a Rakṣas,⁶ but on the other hand are kept off by the use of the enclosing sticks, by the free employment of fire, by the drawing of magic circles, and by the sound of the pressing stones.⁷

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¹ PGS. i. 16. 24.

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² PGS. i. 12. 4.

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³ PGS. ii. 6. 10.

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⁴ HGS. i. 6. 5.

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⁵ i. 28.

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⁶ AB. ii. 7, 1.

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⁷ TS. ii. 6. 6, 2; RV. x. 36. 4; ÇB. vii. 7. 1. 2; ApÇS. xi. 11. 6. Araru is a demon banned from the place of sacrifice, TS. i. 1. 9; MS. i. 1. 10; iv. 1. 10; VS. i. 26; TB. iii. 2. 9. 4; possibly in RV. x. 9. 9, 10.

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The great gods of the Vedic period are not reduced to demons, nor do they approximate to them: it is true that their names are invoked in very trivial occasions such as that of Indra in an idiotic spell to induce a slave not to run away from his master,⁸ or to secure connexion,⁹ but that merely denotes that the gods were familiar enough to their votaries not to despise aiding them in all their actions. Hillebrandt¹⁰ indeed sees in some passages the tendency to reduce Rudra to the rank of little more than a demon, but, while Rudra is a terrible god and is in some ways akin to the demons, the evidence adduced by Hillebrandt is not altogether in point. Rudra is to be addressed when a man is on a path, at cross-roads, crossing a river, at a mountain, a forest, a burial-ground and a stable, but the fact that he is so to be invoked is expressly explained by his omnipresence,¹¹ and we have here not so much a primitive idea as the extension to every sphere of activity of the great god Rudra, the sign of an advanced theistic view of the god rather than a degradation of his nature. More kinship to legends of demons is to be seen in such a legend as that of Indra becoming a horse's tail;¹² the gods are able to change form at will, a fact of which Indra makes free use in his amourettes, but it is rarely that they adopt anything but a noble form such as the eagle form of Indra, but that god has a tendency to assume popular traits. Kubera, later the god of wealth, is a Rakṣas and lord of robbers and evil-doers in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa;¹ in the Sūtras² he is invoked with Īçāna for the husband in the marriage ritual, and his hosts plague children. Comparison³ with Greek Kabeiros and explanation as a mountain spirit of hiding propensities are most doubtful.

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⁸ PGS. iii. 7. 3.

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⁹ PGS. i. 9. 5.

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¹⁰ *Ved. Myth.* iii. 425.

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¹¹ PGS. iii. 15. 7 ff.; HGS. i. 16. 8 ff.; AGS. iv. 8. 40; MP. i. 13. 8; ApGS. ix. 3; Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², pp. 220 ff. Arbman's objections (*Rudra*, pp. 222 ff.) are irrelevant.

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¹² Geldner, *Ved. Stud.* ii. 183; perhaps an ant, RV. i. 51. 9; Hillebrandt, *op. cit.* iii. 172, 173.

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¹ xiii. 4. 3, 10; cf. AV. viii. 10. 28.

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² ÇGS. i. 11. 7; HGS. ii. 1. 3. 7.

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³ Hopkins, *JAOS.* xxxi. 55-70.

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A certain interest attaches to the very late Nejameṣa, who appears apparently as banned in the ritual of the parting of the hair of the bride,⁴ for he reappears in the form of Naigameṣa in the medical work of Suçruta, and as Nemesa in a Mathurā inscription.⁵ It is dubious whether the name is found in the epic, though possibly the Naigameya there recorded may be an error for it.⁶

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⁴ ÇGS. i. 22. 7; AGS. i. 14. 3.

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⁵ Bühler, *EI.* ii. 316; Winternitz, *JRAS.* 1895, pp. 149 ff.; Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* iii. 424.

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⁶ Hopkins, *Epic Myth.*, pp. 103, 227, 229.

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In the somewhat late Mānava Gṛhya Sūtra⁷ we have a rite prescribed for one who suffers from possession by the Vināyakas, Çālakaṭaṅkaṭa, Kūṣmāṇḍarājaputra, Usmita and Devayajana, in which a strange variety of deities are invoked, Vimukha, Çyena, Baka, Yakṣa, Kalaha, Bhīru, Vināyaka, Kūṣmāṇḍarājaputra, Yajnāvikṣepin, Kulaṅgāpamārin, Yūpakeçin, Sūparakroḍin, Haimavata, Jambhaka, Virūpākṣa, Lohitākṣa, Vaiçravaṇa, Mahāsena, Mahādeva, Mahārāja. Mahādeva is doubtless Rudra, Mahāsena appears elsewhere⁸ as a disease demon and is an epithet of Skanda, Vaiçravaṇa is Kubera. In Yājñavalkya⁹ we find a single Vināyaka, who is here son of the goddess Ambikā, and appointed by Brahman and Rudra to be the overlord of the Gaṇas, troupes, perhaps akin to those assigned to Rudra’s entourage in the Yajurveda.¹⁰ Doubtless we have here something akin to the later Gaṇeça, who is not Vedic, but it is by no means certain that we are to interpret Vināyaka as denoting ‘leader’, instead of ‘remover of obstacles’,¹¹ or the epithet Vighneça, which later is found applied to Gaṇeça, as lord of Vighnas, conceived as destroyers. The term Yakṣa,¹² which occurs in this list, is far better known in the Buddhist form of Yakkha; we find the term applied to a wondrous thing in the Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa;¹³ the Ṛṣis seek to behold something of this kind, and Indra reveals to them the tortoise Akūpāra, of boundless dimension, who is clearly the cosmic tortoise who finds the earth in the ocean. The specification of the term to mean a species of spirit, usually associated with Kubera, is not found until the period of the Gṛhya Sūtras.

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⁷ ii. 14; Arbman, *Rudra*, pp. 57 f. 219 ff.

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⁸ PGS. i. 16. 24 is cited by Arbman, but wrongly. Skanda appears in BhGS. iii. 9; AV. Par. xx; BG. Par. iv. 2.

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⁹ i. 271 ff.

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¹⁰ TS. iv. 5. 4.

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¹¹ Jacobi, *ERE.* ii. 807.

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¹² Boyer, *JA.* 1906, i. 393 ff.; Oldenberg, *RV.* ii. ff.; Hopkins, *Epic Myth.*, pp. 30 f.

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¹³ iii. 203, 272. *contra*, Winternitz, *JRAS.* 1898, p. 383.

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