Yaksha — Yakṣa — is the broad class of Hindu (and Buddhist and Jain) nature-spirit: guardians of the earth’s hidden treasures, of forests, trees, wells, and wild places, attendants of the wealth-god Kubera. Ambivalent beings — benevolent custodians and gentle tree-spirits in one aspect, dangerous flesh-eating ogres in another — the yakshas are among the oldest objects of worship on the subcontinent, predating the great gods in popular devotion.
Guardians of Treasure and Earth
The yakshas serve Kubera, lord of wealth and king of the yakshas, who rules from the golden city of Alaka in the Himalayas. As his attendants they guard buried treasure, mineral wealth, and the riches of the earth — for hidden gold and gems are their especial charge. They are spirits of place: a yaksha may inhabit a particular banyan or peepal tree, a pool, a mountain, or a city, and as the guardian-genius of that spot must be honoured by those who would use it. The benevolent yaksha brings fertility, prosperity, and protection; village shrines and tree-altars across India still receive offerings to such local guardian-spirits.
The Riddling Yaksha of the Lake
The most famous yaksha in literature is the guardian of a forest lake in the Mahabharata — the Yaksha Prashna, “the questions of the yaksha.” When the thirsty Pandavas come one by one to drink, the yaksha (in truth the god Dharma/Yama in disguise) forbids them until they answer his questions; four brothers ignore him and fall dead. Only the wise Yudhishthira stops to answer, and his replies to the yaksha’s profound riddles — “What is the greatest wonder?” (“That each day death strikes, and yet the living believe themselves immortal”) — constitute one of the great wisdom-dialogues of the epic. Pleased, the yaksha restores the dead brothers to life.
The Cloud-Messenger’s Exile
A yaksha is also the hero of one of Sanskrit’s most beloved poems, Kalidasa’s Meghaduta (“The Cloud Messenger”): a yaksha banished by Kubera from Alaka, pining for his distant wife, who begs a passing monsoon cloud to carry his love-message across all India to her. Here the yaksha is wholly tender and human — the lovelorn exile whose longing maps the geography of the subcontinent.
The Dark Aspect and the Sacred Sculpture
Yet the yaksha has a fearsome face. In its malign aspect it is a man-eater haunting lonely roads and forests, kin to the rakshasa and the pishacha; some yakshas are demonic ogres who must be appeased or fought. The female yakshinis are likewise double-natured. In art, the colossal yaksha statues of the Mauryan age are among the earliest monumental sculptures of India, and the yaksha’s benevolent fertility-aspect deeply shaped the iconography of later Hindu and Buddhist deities. Worshipped before the Vedic gods and still honoured at countless tree-shrines, the yaksha is the enduring spirit of the wild, sacred, treasure-keeping earth itself.