The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c23.s2.29

v1.c23.s2.29

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.