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To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.satanism,alt.mythology,alt.pagan,talk.religion.misc,talk.religion.buddhism From: satanservice.org@boboroshi (SOD of the CoE) Subject: Demons/Nature Spirits in Hinduism and Buddhism Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 04:10:54 GMT 50021209 VII Orig-From: Barry CarrollOrig-To: sacredlandscapelist@yahoogroups.com This is a repost of a book review and essay from 10/5/ 01 called _There's Something In The Water_: In March, I found a small book: Disguises of the Demon- The Development of the Yaksa in Hinduism and Buddhism Gail H. Sutherland, New York University Press, 1991. The author has alot to say about the perception of evil among caste-conscious Hindus and ascetic Buddhists and some of the special kind of demons that represent the sins their cultures worry about -- like, for example, ritual uncleanliness. More interesting to me was the story of how the indigenous deities of India were typically recast as mere supporting players in the art and religion of regional conquering empires. Originally indigenous deities represented the power and mystery of nature in pre-Hindu and pre-Buddhist times. However in the art of the conquering Hindu and Buddhist kings, the old nature gods were used to represent the material world that the new gods and their worshipful kings ruled over. Now the old gods were portrayed as subjects of the new gods just like the rest of the conquered populations who once worshiped them. The author goes on to trace in temple art and sacred literature how the class of popular nature gods called Yaksa slowly became demonized and were frequently made to play the part of the untamed and unruly spirit within man that was refined and elevated by contact with the new gods and their spiritual influence. He also represented all the icky qualities that high caste individuals associate with low caste individuals who are paying for their sins from a previous life. This kind of spiritual subversion is not limited to India. Around the world the now distorted figures of what were once objects of devotion to a conquered or faded old order, are frequently a source of threatening ghosts, boogymen, and evil spirits to members of the dominant culture. you can read all about it Another interesting subject is the author's look at the symbolism of water in the Indian tradition. I think it throws light on several thought-provoking chains of association between nature spirits, fertility and wealth.. _Something In The Water_ In India, water is connected to the mythology of nature spirits -- the Nagas and the Yaksas. The Yaksas are primarily tree spirits while the Naga are serpent gods and primarily spirits of the waters -- but the two domains overlap. In local religious expression, yaksas were worshiped most often in the form of a tree and especially in groves of Pipal trees. Large trees or abundant groves signaled the presence of abundant ground water. Around the early Buddhist stuppas at Sanchi and Bharhut in Central India, voluptuous Yakinis regularly appear in sculpture supporting themselves with one hand on a branch that springs into bloom at their touch. Sometimes snakes also twine in the branches. This little tradition of fertile maiden, tree in bloom, and snakes is imagery that reaches back to the Neolithic [6000-3500 BC] in Eastern Europe and the Near East. In this case it also signals the presence of Nagas. Since the waters of the earth are their domain , Nagas also live in the waters beneath such trees as well as in lakes, rivers and streams. _It Falls Like Gentle Rain_ Nagas and trees are thought to contain the life-supporting watery essence that is manifest in trees as sap. They contains 'rasa' (fire), "the volatile quickening agent of life". Along with sap in trees, 'rasa' is found in semen, milk, rain, honey, mead, liquor and the venom secreted by the Nagas -and also with the magical substances Soma and Amrita. Art historian, Ananda Coomaraswamy published his 2 volume investigation into the folklore of the Yaksa in 1931. In this book he comments on the significance of water: There is a cycle in which vital energy flows to earth from heaven thru the rain waters, to plants, cattle etc., and to man providing the reproductive spark, thence returning ultimately to the waters. But its source is always the heavens. In its latency, the creative power of the waters is conceived of as a feminine element holding within the potential for life. When the waters are embodied within a living thing whether in animals, human semen or the sap of plants and trees, very often that potency is conceived of as male. The sexual ambiguity of the fluid element is best seen in the analogous ambiguity of Soma, the Vedic plant and deity whose functional potency encompasses the dualities of male and female as well as fire and water. _Water Of Life/Water Of Oblivion_ The author comments: Over and above the capacity of the waters to confer the blessings of fertility and abundance, lies their propensity for sheer transformative energy. Water is a metamorphic medium that quickens life into being from latency or compels living beings toward their demise. This touches on the idea that if water is the source of the fertility that engenders life, then it is also the source of Maya (material illusion). I certainly see how this equation works but it also seems to smack of a value judgement by the ascetic mentality of world-renouncing monastic types. Even so, art historian Heinrich Zimmer, famous for his photos of Indian temples, refers to the waters of illusion in two myths about the holy seer, Naruda. The sense of these tales is that the waters contain the secrets of being and Karma -- the law of causality. One tale goes like this: When Naruda, the human disciple asked to be taught the secret, the god did not disclose the answer by any verbal instruction or formula. Instead, he pointed to the water as the element of initiation. _Power Over the Earth and the Waters of the Earth_ The taming and manipulation of the waters as a means of gaining power and mastery is a motif that is well-known in folk literature and world mythology. Especially in Buddhist literature the sovereignty of the king is determined by his symbolic and actual mastery over the elements, particularly in the form of rain. (significance as mentioned earlier) A legend where the Naga lends his authority to the Buddha is that of him being sheltered during a week of storms by the naga Mucalinda, under whose tree Buddha took refuge. In a huge relief at the stupa of Amaravati, Buddha sits on Mucalinda as if on a throne -- a symbol of Buddha's rulership over the waters -- and by extension, the material world. This concept applies in Hindu cosmology as well. As it goes in the foundation myth of Nepal, the waters of that place were once filled with Nagas. Vishnu, principal god of the Hindu pantheon, drove them out except for one. The last Naga made a pact with Vishnu that Vishnu should guard the land's riches. Then men began to populate the land. The author points out that this myth also comments on the imposition of a new faith on the indigenous peoples and the Nagas (or Yaksas) are characterizations of the irreligious, unbelieving and unconverted. _A Boon from Siva_ You might expect Shivites to be more sympathetic to representatives of unruly Nature. The iconography of Siva gets short shrift in this book compared to Visnu and Buddha. Nevertheless, a Shivaite twist on yaksa character is revealed in a tale where a terrible event befalls Lord Siva. Siva tranfers his feelings of grief, insanity and torment onto the yaksa Pancalika, because he knows Pankalika can bear the burden of it all. In exchange for accepting this burden, Siva grants him a boon. He tells the yaksa that during one month a year: 'anyone who worships or touches you with devotion shall go mad and sing, dance, sport and play on their instruments with zeal', and in this state, 'shall have magic powers'. This story shows an assimilation of the cult of the yaksa with the worship of Siva. When the yaksa becomes a devotional object he is a stand-in for Siva himself. Anyone who touches him is temporarily possessed by a very Shivite kind of divine ecstacy. _Conflation Station_ In early times the yaksa was a souce of creation equated with the world tree. A. Coomaraswamy says, the Vedic myth of the actual creation takes the form of the origination of a tree from the navel of a primal male who rests upon the waters and from whose navel the tree rises up. He is called a Yaksa ... The quotation from the Vedas goes: The great yaksa steeped in concentration on the surface of the water in the middle of the world, on him the various gods are fixed like branches around the trunk of a tree." AC also comments that in later times the idea of Yaksa as a source of creation was absorbed into the Hindu concept of Brahma. {In Hindu cosmology Vishnu who lies asleep at the world axis, dreams Brahma who then does the Actual Work of creating the material world.} Taking it a step further, in the Mahabarata, -- the epic Indian tale where Vishnu in the form of Krishna aids one side in a battle of warring clans -- the yaksa is the god Dharma in disguise. One thing we see in all this is conflation at work. Hindu and Buddhist scholars of the new religions connected the earthy Yaksa, symbol of the creative and causal forces of the natural world, to related concepts like Brahma, Dharma, Karma and Maya that create and control existence. _The Persistence of Popular Faith_ At the popular level the idea that the yaksa was a source of material abundance persisted as well. "Images of demigods present at early popular Buddhist sites compare to the altars of patron saints to whom the pious catholic prays for material blessings". Kubera, king of the yaksas, was regarded as a god of wealth in the sense that wealth flows from the abundance of the earth. Sometimes he was even pictured with a "grail-like pot or similar vessel of inexhaustable supply". A variant on this theme is humorously rendered in an earthly way on the exterior of a Buddhist monument in Pakistan with Kubera holding a mug endlessly refilled by a group of lovely maidens. _Buddha Prototype_ Various historians of Asian art point out that statues of the stocky, round bellied yaksa king are the prototype for early statues of the Buddha. Beyond that it seem to me that this artistic device shows a conflation in the popular mind of the spirit IN the tree who grants prosperity, with the Buddha who received enlightenment while seated UNDER a tree. I can't help but wonder if this is the origin of the so-called 'Chinese' Fat Buddha sold for Good Luck. [Ho Tei!] _Out On A Limb_ Fat Buddhas I've seen are shown holding some kind of gourd 'canteen-like' vessel -- otherwise it's hooked to their belt. They may also appear holding a boat-shaped Chinese ingot of gold above their head or sometimes they are simply seated on a pile of ingots and/or coins in the company of a fat toad or a peach [longevity]. Sometimes they simply hold up a staff or branch with a peach clinging to it -- in a gesture kind of like the Yakinis with their blooming branch. It may be that some of these jolly fat men are not actually Buddhas but rather Chinese Taoist immortals or Japanese Zen holy men as filled with the Tao as Kubera was by the 'rasa' in the contents of his cup. Maybe the Tao is still another Great Natural Principle conflated with an oriental stand in for the yaksa. If so, I think we might have a handle on how a half-starved meditating ascetic under a Bo tree in India, turns into the statuette of a little fat guy on a pile of gold next to the cash register at a Taiwanese convenience store in Texas. EOF
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