Yakshasयक्ष

The yakshas (यक्ष) are nature-spirits of the Indian imagination: tutelary beings of trees, groves, waters, mountains and, above all, of wealth hidden in the earth. Neither gods nor demons, they occupy the ambiguous middle of the cosmology — usually benevolent guardians of place and prosperity, occasionally capricious or dangerous, always local, always near. Their king is Kubera, lord of riches and regent of the north, whose city Alaka in the Himalaya they inhabit as courtiers and treasure-keepers. Their female counterparts, the yakshis, are spirits of fertility and abundance, imagined from antiquity as women entwined with flowering trees.

In early art

The yakshas hold a distinctive place in the history of Indian sculpture: colossal free-standing yaksha figures of the last centuries BCE are among the earliest monumental cult images known from the subcontinent, and scholars have long argued that their heavy, frontal forms shaped the conventions of later divine iconography. Yaksha and yakshi figures crowd the gateways of the early Buddhist stupas at Bharhut and Sanchi, the tree-embracing yakshi becoming one of the canonical motifs of Indian art. In Buddhism and Jainism alike the class was absorbed as attendants and guardians — every Jain tirthankara is flanked by a yaksha and yakshi pair.

In literature

Two famous texts turn on a yaksha. In the Mahabharata's Yaksha Prashna, a spirit guarding a lake fells four Pandava brothers who drink without answering his questions; Yudhishthira submits to the riddling interrogation on dharma — what is swifter than wind, what is the greatest wonder — and his answers restore his brothers, the yaksha revealing himself as Dharma, the god of righteousness, in disguise. And Kalidasa's Meghaduta, among the most loved of Sanskrit poems, is spoken by a yaksha exiled from Alaka, who begs a passing monsoon cloud to carry a message across the breadth of India to his wife. The spirit of place became, in the poets' hands, the voice of longing itself; in village India, meanwhile, yaksha-like guardian spirits under many local names still receive offerings at the boundaries of settlements and fields.