Note 11 — The Queen of the Rock House1

In the Preface to The Kathākoça, p. xiii, Mr. Tawney quoted Dr. Bühler’s words regarding the Jain belief in animism,—that souls are to be found “in apparently lifeless masses, in stone, in clods of earth, in drops of water, in fire and in wind”—and mentions that as far as he knew, the Jains stand alone in this belief. Nevertheless, in the cases of Ahalyā and Rambhā, and the Apsaras of the Kathā Sarit Sāgara,—who, while she was in the form of an image or relief, shed tears on seeing her husband,—as well as in the examples in the other folk-tales,11 the notion appears to be that the soul or spirit continued to exist in the petrified body, which was ready to return to its original state as soon as some necessary occurrence took place, whether a sprinkling of charmed water which neutralised the former spell, or the termination of a period fixed by a curse, or otherwise. We can perhaps see further evidence of the existence of the same belief in India and Ceylon in the stone statues of guardian deities, such as Bhairava, Nāgas, Yakshas, and Rākshasas, carved at religious edifices; they, as well as the figures in the Euphrates Valley and Egypt, appear to have been thought to act as protectors because, although formed of stone, a soul existed in them, that is, so far as evil spirits were concerned they were living stones, and not mere scarecrows.