Note 4 — Chapter LXVIII · Description of a Rákshasí (or female fiend).[4]

The black Rákshasas were believed to have been a colony of African Negroes in southern India and Ceylon. The Rakhs is Rax, as Sycorax of Shakespeare.

Note:—The whole story of the fiendish Súchí is an allegory of the human mind, and its rapacity. The transformation of the huge to the thin pinnate body, and again its assumption of the big form, are allegorical of the change of the corporeal and spiritual bodies—the Sthúla and Súkshma saríras, in the course of the repeated transmigrations of the soul from its gross to subtle forms by the desire of the mind. Tired of the world the mind forsakes the gross body upon death, and assumes the finer spiritual form, but being soon dissatisfied with it reverts to its former gross form again. It is also explained to be the two states of animá and garimá, the minuteness and bulkiness, which the Yogi attains by his yoga.