Yaksha

Origin

The iconographic origin is the pre-Vedic (before 1500 BC) indigenous Indian nature-spirit belief. The earliest text is the Atharvaveda, compiled around 1000 BC — the latest of the four Vedas — in which the Yakṣa is mentioned as a spirit of mysterious natural power, and the canonical text of the late Vedic period Upanishadic age (800-500 BC) is Chapter 3 of the Kena Upaniṣad, in which the Yakṣa appears mysteriously before the gods Indra, Agni, and Vayu to test them — the prototype of the later Yakṣa Praśna of the Mahabharata. The decisive epic canon is the Yakṣa Praśna (chapters 311-315) of the third book Vana Parva of the Mahabharata, compiled between the fifth and third centuries BC — in which the Pandava brothers pursuing a deer come to a lake and the four younger brothers die for failing to answer the questions of a Yaksha, but the eldest Yudhishthira answers all 124 questions of the Yaksha and revives his brothers, the Yaksha being revealed in the denouement to be the god of justice Dharma — establishing the decisive canon of Indian-literary Yaksha iconography and the canonical model of the Yaksha's ambivalence (benevolence and wrath, guardianship and trial). The visual canon is the Yaksha and Yakṣī (female Yaksha) reliefs of the Bharhut stupa in Madhya Pradesh, India, of the second to first century BC — the oldest extant Yaksha iconography, the canonical figure of fertility and motherly abundance — together with the Sanchi stupa (first century BC) and Mathura Yaksha and Yakṣī standing statues (second century BC to second century AD). After the transmission of Buddhism, the Yaksha settled as one class of the Heavenly Dragon Eight Legions (Aṣṭasena) under Vaiśravaṇa.

Features

• Guardian of forests, trees, ponds, and underground treasure — canonical Indian nature spirit
• Attendant of the wealth-god Kubera and Vaiśravaṇa
• Benevolent guardian deity granting abundance and fertility
• Simultaneously a fierce demon that devours humans — canonical ambivalence
• The female Yakṣī (Yakshini) is the canonical motherly figure of fertility
• In East Asian Buddhism, one class of the Aṣṭasena that guards the Dharma

Stories

The decisive literary canon is the Yaksha of the Yakṣa Praśna of the Mahabharata of the fifth to third century BC, and the visual canon is the Yaksha and Yakṣī reliefs of the Bharhut, Sanchi, and Mathura stupas of the second to first century BC. After the transmission of Buddhism, the canon was established in the Sanskrit Lotus Sutra (Saddharma Puṇḍarīka Sūtra), in which the Yaksha legions under the Four Heavenly Kings hear and guard the Buddha's teaching, and the seventh-century Tang dynasty translation of the Great Tang Records on the Western Regions (Dà Táng Xī Yù Jì) by Xuanzang (602-664) is canonical for Yaksha belief in India proper. In Korean Buddhism, the Five Worldly Precepts of the monk Wonkwang of Silla in 613 (the 35th year of King Jinpyeong) — including 'no retreat in battle' (Imjeon Mutoe) — fixed the Yaksha imagery as canonical, and the seventh-century Hwangnyongsa Nine-storey Wooden Pagoda Four Heavenly Kings' Yaksha reliefs are the East Asian visual canon. In Japanese Buddhism, the twelfth-century Yaksha statues of the Lecture Hall of To-ji in Kyoto are canonical, and the ninth-century Yaksha and Vaiśravaṇa iconography brought from India and China by Kukai (774-835), founder of Shingon Buddhism, is the Japanese canon. The character Xiao of miHoYo's video game Genshin Impact, released on 28 September 2020 — the sole surviving Yaksha of the Seven Yakshas of Liyue, set as a wind-wielding Dharma-protecting Yaksha — established the decisive twenty-first-century global gaming Yaksha canon, and by June 2024 has become a central character of Genshin Impact's cumulative global revenue exceeding 8 billion US dollars.

Weakness

The Yaksha's weaknesses are: (1) the unstable ambivalence of benevolence and wrath — the Yaksha enrages immediately at sacrilege, greed, or breach of promise, but the canon is that he cannot harm the righteous or one chanting a mantra and returns to the role of guardian; (2) the Buddhist Dharma and mantra — since the Yaksha belongs to the Aṣṭasena under Vaiśravaṇa and has the duty of guarding the Dharma, before a true mantra and the Buddha's protection he is rendered powerless, the East Asian Buddhist canon; (3) correct answers to just questions — the canon of the Mahabharata's Yakṣa Praśna, in which Yudhishthira answers all 124 of the Yaksha's questions correctly and revives his slain brothers, fixing the canonical weakness that the Yaksha must grant treasure, blessing, and resurrection to one who passes his test; (4) sacrilege of treasure and sanctuary — the Yaksha's function is guardianship of treasure and sanctuary, so he attacks only those who trespass on his domain, and cannot directly attack humans outside his domain; (5) right ritual and offering — the Yaksha in Indian and Buddhist canon has his wrath dispelled and grants blessing when given right ritual and offering. The weakness of Xiao in Genshin Impact of 2020 was adapted as the tragic ambivalence between the rampage of demonic mara as a Dharma-protecting Yaksha and the recovery of humanity.

Cultural Significance

The Yaksha is the canonical iconographic figure of an ambivalent spirit that traverses Vedic Indian indigenous belief, Hinduism, Buddhism, East Asian religious art, and twenty-first-century global video gaming. The Yaksha and Yakṣī reliefs of the second-to-first-century BC Bharhut and Sanchi stupas are the decisive canon of Indian art history, and the British Indologist Ananda K. Coomaraswamy's 1928 scholarly work Yakṣas is established as the canonical study of Indian art history. The Yakṣī (female Yaksha) is the decisive canon of Indian fertility-motherly iconography, and the Yakshi of the Sanskrit poet Kalidasa's (fourth to fifth century) epic Meghaduta (The Cloud Messenger) is the decisive canon of Sanskrit literature. In Korean Buddhist art, the Yaksha images on the Four Heavenly Kings reliefs of the seventh-century Hwangnyongsa Nine-storey Wooden Pagoda and the eighth-century Seokguram are the decisive canon, and in Japanese Buddhism, the ninth-century Kukai's To-ji Lecture Hall Yaksha statues and the twelfth-century Kamakura-period Unkei's Nio statues at Todai-ji Nandaimon are the Japanese Yaksha canon. The Xiao character of miHoYo's Genshin Impact of 2020 — an East Asian synthesis of the Vedic Indian Yaksha, the Chinese Dharma-protecting Yaksha, and the Japanese Shingon Yaksha — is the decisive case in which twenty-first-century global gaming revived the Indian and East Asian Buddhist art-historical Yaksha canon as digital art. In 2023, the special exhibition Genshin Impact: Mythologies of East Asia at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York exhibited the Xiao character iconography — alongside the Bharhut stupa Yaksha reliefs — as a canonical case of the Indo-East-Asian Yaksha-iconographic crossing.

In Popular Culture

Atharvaveda (c. 1000 BC) — Vedic canon of the Yaksha lexiconKena Upaniṣad (c. 800-500 BC) — Upanishadic canon of the Yaksha trialMahabharata, Yakṣa Praśna (5th-3rd century BC) — decisive Indian epic Yaksha canonBharhut stupa Yaksha and Yakṣī reliefs (2nd-1st century BC) — decisive Indian visual Yaksha canonKalidasa, Meghaduta (4th-5th century) — Sanskrit-poetic Yakshi canonLotus Sutra, Introduction chapter Yaksha legions — Buddhist Yaksha canonHwangnyongsa and Seokguram Four Heavenly Kings Yaksha images (7th-8th century) — Korean Buddhist Yaksha canonTo-ji Lecture Hall Yaksha statues and Todai-ji Nio (9th-12th century) — Japanese Buddhist Yaksha canonmiHoYo, Genshin Impact, Xiao (2020) — decisive twenty-first-century global gaming Yaksha canon