Article: Yakṣas and yakṣīs

Tree emblems of the Vyantara gods
Image by British Library © CC0 1.0 (Creative Commons Public Domain)

In descriptions of the Jain universe yakṣas are categorised as Vyantara gods. They form the third among the eight groups of this class of gods. Thus they have their own emblem, names, social organisation and place in the Jain universe. They are depicted in cosmological writings and artworks in ways that support this classification.

All these creatures wander around the three worlds and may interact with humans. Their palaces are in the space between the highest hell and the surface of the earth. Like other Vyantara deities, the yakṣas are ruled by two indras or kings. The kings each have four wives according to the Śvetāmbaras or two wives in the Digambara tradition, plus retinues.

Each Vyantara group has an identifying colour and symbol, a species of tree. Each type of Vyantara has a given number of members, whose names are listed in cosmological works.

Manuscripts digitised on JAINpedia contain information on yakṣas, placing them in the list of Vyantara deities. Saṃgrahaṇī-ratna manuscripts in the British Library present data on the yakṣas – including emblematic tree, colour and names of the indras – in two main ways.

First, information is presented on the fourth line in these tables:

• found in Or. 13454
• in Or. 13456

Secondly, colourful paintings depict the yakṣas’ emblematic tree above a yakṣa in the third panel from the left:

• in Or. 13454
• in Or. 13456

In manuscript illustrations, ‘blue’ is a common way to picture ‘black’.

Some of the listed yakṣas appear independently in connection with sanctuaries in passages of the Jain scriptures, but nothing much is known about the individual figures. The only one who has developed into a separate deity is Māṇibhadra.

Pārśva and his entourage
Image by Nalini Balbir © Nalini Balbir

The various yakṣas and yakṣīs are usually considered to fall into pairs of deities, made up of a male – the yakṣa – and a female – the yakṣī. They are often called ‘deities of the doctrine’ and ‘messengers of the teaching’, which underlines the role of the yakṣa and yakṣī as defenders and propagators of the Jinas’ teaching. The terms adhiṣṭhāyaka – masculine – and adhiṣṭhāyikā – feminine – meaning ‘standing beside’ are also used to underline their roles as attendants to the Jinas.

Each Jina is linked with a specific yakṣa and yakṣī. The forging of these connections is of unknown date but by the 11th century there are fairly strong associations between named Jinas and particular attendant deities. The names of the yakṣa and yakṣī for each Jina vary according to the sectarian tradition, however.

Nevertheless, stories show that the yakṣas’ relations with Jinas before they reach omniscience are as ambivalent as they are with human beings. Either the yakṣas show reverence to them or they wish to disturb their meditation.

Mahāvīra and his yakṣas
Image by Romana Klee © CC BY-SA 2.0

The association of a specific pair of yakṣas and yakṣīs with each of the 24 Jinas is not evident in the first mentions of the ‘messengers of the teaching’. The historical situation is rather confused since the ‘early’ texts or pieces of art are often difficult to date and identifications may be controversial. What is more certain is that pairs of named yakṣas and yakṣīs were clearly linked with particular Jinas by the 11th century.

One scholar has identified śāsana-devatās in a sculpture dating from roughly the first century CE. A pair of figures flanking a Jina on a stone slab from Mathurā have been labelled yakṣa and yakṣī (Quintanilla 2000) so Quintanilla considers that the association for each Jina may date back to this period.

Mostly, however, it is admitted that there is no iconographic evidence of yakṣas and yakṣīs attending the Jinas before the fifth century CE (Shah 1987: 212). Scholars also generally agree that there is no separate sculpture of any of them ‘which can with confidence be assigned to a period before c. 500 A.D.’ (Shah 1987).

The earliest representation of such a pair is considered to be a bronze from Akota, west of Baroda in Gujarat. Dating back to around 550 CE, the pair flanks an image of the first Jina, Ṛṣabhanātha or Lord Ṛṣabha. On the left side of the stela is the yakṣa Sarvānubhūti, on the right the yakṣī Ambikā (Shah 1959: 28–29: plates 10a, 10b and 11). The same pair of yakṣas appears with the 23rd Jina, Pārśvanātha or Lord Pārśva, on another stela from Akota carved in the middle of the seventh century (Shah 1959: 25: plates 22, 23a and 23b).

Thus it seems that first came the depiction of a pair of attendant deities that was the same for all Jinas. Here the male was named Sarvānubhūti or Yakṣeśvara and the female Ambikā. There are, then, images of the pair Dharaṇendra and Padmāvatī, whose association with snakes is clear in their depiction. Both pairs can be said to convey the notions of power, success and fertility.

Mostly, however, representations of such pairs are rather rare before the eighth century CE. They became popular around the 11th century.

Further, all the yakṣa and yakṣī pairs are not treated identically in Jain art, just as all the Jinas are not handled the same in traditional perception. Those associated with the most significant Jinas are given more importance and could well have been the oldest individualised ones. These are the deities linked to:

• the first Jina, Ṛṣabha
• the 22nd Jina, Neminātha or Lord Nemi
• the 23rd Jina, Pārśvanātha or Lord Pārśva
• the 24th Jina, Mahāvīra

Their names are identical and stable among Śvetāmbaras and Digambaras, which is not the case with most of the others, as the table shows.

Systematic tables such as this can be extracted from texts dating back to a period from the end of the first half of the eighth century onwards. Before that, the only one where the 24 pairs are listed systematically is the Tiloyapannatti, a Digambara work on the Jain universe written in Prakrit. This is probably earlier than the eighth century, although its original date is unclear. There the names of the yakṣas and yakṣīs are sometimes different from what is found in other Digambara sources (see Wiley 2004: 248–249: third column). The lists appear to be finalised in the 12th century. An instance of a Śvetāmbara compendium of teaching in which the lists appear is Nemicandra’s Pravacanasāroddhāra. The 24 yakṣas are listed in verses 373 to 374 and the 24 yakṣīs in verses 375 to 376.

There are occasional variations of the names in the table and the sectarian differences are not clearcut. In some sources, there is some overlap between the categories of yakṣī and vidyā-devī, which is favoured because both groups contain female deities with identical names.

Pārśva and his attendants
Image by BaboMike – Mike Rowe © CC BY-NC 2.0

There is a special connection between the 23rd Jina Pārśvanātha or Lord Pārśva and his yakṣa, known as Dharaṇendra, which is familiar to all Jains and a favourite subject in art. Although this story is not specifically told for the Digambara yakṣa Mātanga, he is also linked closely with snakes.

Dharaṇendra is the rebirth of a snake and the king of snakes. The tradition goes that a snake lives in a log, which the false ascetic Kamaṭha wants to use for a sacred fire. Prince Pārśva, the future 23rd Jina, realises the snake is hidden in the log so he rescues it from being burnt alive. Manuscript illustrations of the Śvetāmbara work, the Kalpa-sūtra, often depict this episode, such as this page on JAINpedia.

Later on the prince renounces his lay status and begins to lead a true ascetic life. While Pārśva stands deep in meditation, a demon attacks him, wanting to test his detachment and resolve. The demon Meghamālin produces ferocious elephants, but the ascetic is never disturbed. Even more furious, Meghamālin creates enormous rainclouds that pour tons of water on to the mendicant. The water rises steadily until it reaches the tip of the Jina’s nose. The snake Dharaṇendra lives underground nearby and finds his throne shaking as the torrent of rain pours down. The snake king comes to bow down to the Jina in respect and places beneath the Jina’s feet a tall lotus and then he ‘covered the Jina’s back, sides and breast with his own coils, and made an umbrella with seven hoods over his head’ (Hemacandra, Triṣaṣṭiśalākāpuruṣacaritra IX. 3. 270ff.; Johnson’s translation, volume V: 396).

This episode is illustrated in the following manuscript pages of the Kalpa-sūtra digitised on JAINpedia:

• Gamma 453 at the Wellcome Library
• Or. 12744 at the British Library
• Or. 5149 at the British Library
• IS 46-1959 at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

This well-known story underlines Pārśva’s relationship with snakes. Snake-hoods are a noteworthy characteristic in the depiction of this Jina, his yakṣa, and also of his yakṣī, Padmāvatī. It also shows the thin boundary between groups of deities. Dharaṇendra is a snake – nāga – who becomes a yakṣa in his next life because he has, literally, served the Jina.

Lord Pārśva and attendants
Image by British Museum © The Trustees of the British Museum

In practice, texts as well as artefacts show that the details of yakṣas and yakṣīs may vary. Just as there are divergences among the diverse texts or among various artefacts, so there are also differences between texts and artefacts. Then there are variations between the Śvetāmbara and Digambara traditions as well. For instance, ‘in some Śvetāmbara texts Gomukha’s mount is an elephant instead of a bull, and he sometimes holds a noose instead of an axe’ (Jain and Fischer 1978 II: 23).

Hence any attempt to list the iconographic characteristics of each yakṣa and yakṣī is bound to be contradicted or expanded. Moreover, there are many cases where the descriptions found in texts cannot be linked to images, because images of minor yakṣas and yakṣīs are not known. The iconography of individual yakṣas and yakṣīs and their variants are discussed in several studies on Jain art, such as:

• pages 67 to 116 of Bhattacharya 1974
• pages 88 to 19 of Tiwari and Sinha 2011, with tables including references to important images on pages 115 to 119.

The following table is restricted to the main basic features of yakṣas and yakṣīs most commonly found in Jain writings and art.

Śvetāmbara image of Padmāvatī
Image by hedonia – Ruchi © CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

As the pairs of yakṣas and yakṣīs are attendants on the Jinas, it is to be expected that their depictions have some connection with the Jinas’ emblems – the lāñchanas. This is largely accurate but there are many instances where there appears to be little such association between the artistic depiction of the Jinas and their attendants.

There are many examples of a clear link between a Jina’s emblem and his attendant deity, such as the emblem of the:

• first Jina, Ṛṣabhanātha or Lord Ṛṣabha, which is the bull, and the name of his yakṣa, Gomukha, which means ‘bull-headed’
• sixth Jina, Padmaprabhanātha or Lord Padmaprabha, which is the red lotus flower, and the name of his yakṣa, Kusuma, meaning ‘flower’
• 23rd Jina, Pārśvanātha or Lord Pārśva, which is the snake, and the association of both his attendants with snakes
• 24th Jina, Mahāvīra, which is the lion, and the vehicle of his yakṣī, Siddhayikā, which is also the lion.

Jvālamālinī, yakṣī of Candraprabha
Image by British Library © British Library Board on www.Europeana.eu

Yakṣas and yakṣīs are primarily seen as attendants of the Jinas but some have grown into deities at the heart of their own cults. Mostly female, these figures have roles as guardian goddesses of Jain pilgrimage sites. Changes in their representation in artwork over the centuries reflect their rising status. These independent divinities are also the subject of Tantric worship that appeases the destructive side of their nature while gaining their favour.

The 24 Jinas are models and represent the ideal of liberation and perfection. Hence Jains theoretically do not approach them with requests for earthly favours, simply offering praises to the Jinas as perfected souls. However, many Jains worship deities with a view to asking them for help in worldly affairs, such as:

• good health or recovery from illness
• the birth of children, especially sons
• success in business
• good luck
• wealth.

The yakṣas and yakṣīs are intermediates between devotees and the Jinas. As gods, yakṣas and yakṣīs are souls trapped in the cycle of rebirth, just as humans are, yet they have divine powers that allow them to bestow favours upon devotees.

All the 24 yakṣas and yakṣīs do not have the same status, however. Some of them have developed into independent figures who have become the focus of specific cults. The most prominent are described in individual articles.

Except for one, all these figures are female deities or goddesses. Indeed, they are much more in the foreground than their male counterparts in the process examined here. The influence of Hinduism, with its emphasis on goddesses as partly mother figures, is one reason for this development. Another factor is the popularity of the devotional movements – bhakti – in the religious atmosphere of medieval India. But

these Jaina goddess cults were not just Jaina incorporations of Hindu deities into lay Jaina devotional practices. The Jaina goddess cults were an integral part of both lay and monastic religious belief and practice, and the Jaina goddess traditions constitute a distinct strand within the complex history of goddess worship in India

Cort 1987, page 236

Innovations are another explanation. Sometimes these are regional, as found in Tamil Nadu and Karnatak, but need further scholarly exploration. A case in point is the cult of Jvālāmālinī.

These independent goddesses are associated with specific holy places, which they are supposed to protect. Prominent examples include connections between:

• Cakreśvarī and Mount Shatrunjaya in Gujarat
• Ambikā and Mount Girnar in Gujarat
• Padmāvatī and Shravana Belgola and Hombuja in Karnatak.

The development of their cults is linked to the growth of these centres of pilgrimage.

Śvetāmbara figure of Ambikā
Image by Shanammumbai © CC BY-SA 3.0

Although these deities embody Jain principles, frequently they are depicted in art holding weapons in their often multiple hands, as do warrior goddesses. This disturbs the notion of non-violence, which is one of the core tenets of Jain belief. Evidence shows that in the tenth century their worship was already well established and important.

Changes in the artistic portrayal of these deities also testifies to their growing religious importance. Usually, yakṣas and yakṣīs – and other figures – are shown much smaller than a Jina and are posed in subordinate positions in the sculpture or painting. These cult goddesses are in some cases represented below their corresponding Jinas. But an independent yakṣī tends to be a larger size than yakṣas and yakṣīs usually are, with the appropriate Jina seated above her.