sacrifices, harass devout men, animate dead bodies, devour human beings, and vex and afflict mankind in all sorts of ways." The Sanskrit name has been written in several ways in Chinese, but the most popular form of transcription is Lo-ch‘a (羅刹). To this the word kuei, demon, is often added, and we are told that Lo-ch‘a is a general name for all malignant demons. The Yakshas in Indian mythology are beings of no definite moral principles, they are neither very good nor very bad, but are simply attendants of the God of Wealth. But the Buddhists gave them a bad character in many cases, and this has clung to them in China. Here the Yakshas tear open graves and devour corpses, and generally go about doing mischief. Old transcriptions of the name Yaksha are Ye (i.e., ya)-ch‘a (夜刹 and 野叉), for which Yuan-chuang substituted Yao (yak)-ch‘a (藥叉). But we seldom meet with this last transcription, the first one being the one in popular use up to the present. It will be seen that the first syllable of this word is represented by the character which means night, and from this circumstance the Chinese have come to regard the Yakshas as peculiarly demons of the night, and haunters of tombs and cemeteries. But these demons can assume various disguises, and they have been known to prowl by day and to kill and eat human beings. They are even said to have eaten up a whole monastery of monks on one occasion. The Yakshas are often represented as being dwarfish human-like creatures with horns on their heads and pale cruel faces. These are sometimes called by the Chinese "ghost-face Yakshas" (鬼面夜叉). Those which dart through the air and fly up to heaven on messages of warfare are called by mortals meteors and comets.[1]
Then there are the Gandharvas, old denizens of an upper world but with new offices and characters among the Buddhists. In Chinese the name is written Kan-t‘a-p‘o (乾闥婆), Kien (gan)-tê-lo (犍陀羅) and in several other ways. It is explained by Hsiang-shên (香神), Gods of smell, from the supposed deriva-
- ↑ The terms shên (神) and kuei-shên (鬼神) are used occasionally to translate "Yakshas." This is seen, e.g., in the Miao-fa-lien-hua-ching (妙法蓮華經) or "Le Lotus de la Bonne Loi." The quotations from the Sanskrit text of this work are from a Nepalese MS. in the author's possession.
