Note 222 — Chapter I · THE EVIL EYE AND THE SCARING OF GHOSTS.

The really friendly agricultural sprites are the pair known in some places as the Jâk and Jâknî, and in others as Chordeva and Chordevî, the “thief godlings.” With the Jâk we come on another of these curious survivals from the early mythology in a sadly degraded form. As Varuna, the god of the firmament, has been reduced in these later days to Barun, a petty weather godling, so the Jâk is the modern representative of the Yaksha, who in better times was the attendant of Kuvera, the god of wealth, in which duty he was assisted by the Guhyaka. The character of the Yaksha is not very certain. He was called Punya-janas, “the good people,” but he sometimes appears as an imp of evil. In the folk-tales, it must be admitted, the Yakshas have an equivocal reputation. In one story the female, or Yakshinî, bewilders travellers at night, makes horns grow on their foreheads, and finally devours them; in another the Yakshas have, like the Churel, feet turned the wrong way and squinting eyes; in a third they separate the hero from the heroine because he failed to make due offerings to them on his wedding day. On the other hand, in a fourth tale the Yakshinî is described as possessed of heavenly beauty; she appears again when a sacrifice is made in a cemetery to get her into the hero’s power, as a heavenly maiden beautifully adorned, seated in a chariot of gold surrounded by lovely girls; and lastly, a Brâhman meets some Buddhist ascetics, performs the Uposhana vow, and would have become a god, had it not been that a wicked man compelled him by force to take food in the evening, and so he was re-born as a Guhyaka.222