The Bewitching Yakshi

The middle aged Namboothiri (A class of Brahmins in Kerala) was on his way across the fields that warm & sultry summer evening, going from his mana to the neighboring one, only that the other one was some distance away. He was indeed walking the distance and alone. Dusk had approached and he was moving swiftly, muttering the name of the lord under his breath to keep away various evil spirits lurking around. As he walked, a figure appeared from the side path. A voluptuous figure dressed in white, flowing hair, a jasmine wreath on one side of the head approached him. To his eyes, at first look she seemed afraid of the darkening gloom. On second looks he was mesmerized, the jasmine smell was sweet and enticing, and the woman, this fully endowed ‘apsarass’ left nothing more to be desired. Such was her beauty and figure. He stopped transfixed.

The lady softly asked if she could accompany him on the walk as she was terrified to venture on her own, she was a bit too late returning home. As they walked, talking about all kinds of interesting things, in tones and words that had many a meaning, the namboothiri could not resist his carnal urges and started to fantasize. Soon a ‘nalukettu’ appeared on the side of the road. The lady stated that this was her house (the namboothiri could see that it was indeed a noble nair’s tharavad, so he had nothing to fear) and hinted that she would be delighted to spend the evening with the namboothiri at her house, if he so preferred. She offered as a token of the offer (that was the sambandham token of yester years) betel leaves and arecanuts but asked for lime. The Namboothiri could not resist the offer and shared the betel package after offering the lime from his Chunnambu duppi. Soon they reached the doorstep. The lady opened the door and the namboothiri was happy to note that it seemed empty, but for them.

Within seconds after the heavy teak door closed, the beautiful apparition changed to a hideous witch with bloodshot eyes and big monstrous teeth. Much too late the Namboothiri realized that he had been ensnared by a yakshi.

When people went out to look for him the next morning, all they could find were a few rotten teeth stained after many years of betel chewing, a few discolored nails from his feet and hands, and the tuft of his hair, under the tall palm tree on the side of the walking path.

This small narrative above is typically the gist of most old yakshi stories. Of course the story advanced with time, had other variations and the ‘yakshi’ became more mobile and entered modern houses, took other forms and so on. For a teenager, it was the figure of the ‘yakshi’, her hormones on overdrive and the various carnal possibilities and the danger that provided continuing fascination. And soon the storyline was to be seen in books, novels and movies of Kerala. Sometimes the palm tree became a ‘pala’ or ‘murukku’ tree. These yakshis are normally beautiful women with long flowing hair which covers their entire back (it appears that their backs are hollow) and their feet are turned backwards. I understood also that they are able to float or glide through the air. The jasmine flowers were in some stories replaced by ‘pala’ flowers. But I am not narrating any more stories. Let us try to figure out what this is myth is all about.

This is a classic Kerala subject, one who is found in many an old Malayalam novel or movie, dressed in white, wearing jasmine flowers and bewitching men who pass her by with her sweet songs and looks and caressing voice….The yakshi songs of Malayalam films are some of the best to date. As a child, when wandering around the fields and roads in Pallavur, late in the evenings or at night, while crossing tall palm trees I have myself been terrified, knees knocking. We had all spent restless evenings and nights terrified that a Yakshi might catch hold of us, and the older story tellers always had this card up their sleeve when faced with a truant child.

While the Yaksha and Yakshi in North India is the good type, note specifically that the Yakshi in Kerala folklore is not always the benevolent kind, she is actually a blood thirsty woman (usually wronged before her death by an upper class man = so her soul is not resting in peace and is constantly out to take revenge on these men), who can take the form of a lovely lady with a fantastic figure and lure you into her arms. What was the significance of the Jasmine or Pala flowers? What is the connection with the Palm tree? Well some enthusiasts or experts, whichever way you put it say that the smell of these flowers is very sexually stimulating (hence also scattered over the nuptial bed!). It is clear that the tree sprouts flowers that have a heavenly fragrance supposedly exciting to the male senses. Supposedly you can see Yakshi pala or Ezhilam pala trees near Bhagavathy temples? Did somebody work out a solution perhaps to keep the lust in check? There is a version that a Yakshi is usually a Namboothiri, Varasiyar or other ambalavasi woman who dies unmarried.

Later I saw the movie based on the great Malayatoor’s novel ‘yakshi’ though I hardly remembered the story. Many other ‘yakshi’ movies and yakshi songs followed and many a time in my teens, I have looked at the awesome & famous Yakshi nude statue at the Malampuzha dam in Palakkad (She is Yakshi, a divine enchantress, sculpted by Kanai Kunhiraman, a leading Kerala sculptor), imagining various possibilities with the female form. Remember that Palakkad was also the place where there existed plenty of palm trees (pana) and of course many namboothiri mana’s and Illam’s.

The yakshi was terrified of iron and holy books. So if one held up the nail, he was saved. This was the trick used by the Katamattathu katthanar. The story of the Iron ezhuttani scaring away the witch comes from the Missionaries who presumably exemplified the use of the holy book and Biblical methods to scare away the voodoo spirit. The iron nail is reminiscent of the nails used to nail truant men to the stake from ancient times, but nailing the seductress to a Kanjiram tree was supposed trap them for ever! Yakshi’s was later equated to the vampire of the Western tales by the title Rakta rakshassu – which of course became a very popular drama in Kerala (remember Thiraskarani manthram…?). Any idea why young ladies in Kerala (many years ago when they listened to parents, that is) were told never to sleep without undergarments? It is said that if they did so, they would be visited by a Gandharva, and you can imagine the consequences. Well, well…I will leave it at that..

But then, are yakshi’s demons, witches? No – Not really for we have temples for yakshi’s in Kerala. One version (Marlene Pitkow) has it that Yakshi’s are female ghosts of unhappy women who die before having se or before marriage or before giving birth. She is the lalitha or Mohini form in Kathakali. They are also associated with goddess Durga; there are special festivals for yakshi’s on durgashtami. According to some definitions, yakshi’s are the feminine kin of yaksha’s and both yaksha’s and yakshi’s are godly beings, not demons. The reader must again note that I am only covering the Kerala yakshi’s. The name has different meanings in different places.

During the heydays of Jainism in India, Yakshas and Yakshis were worshipped. Then came the brahminism wave and the namboothiris, So was it a brahminical method of luring people away from that older religious cult? It could very well have been. So, it could have been the disorderly erasure of the Jainist and Budhist history of Kerala. Or as an old English historian wrote, just a case of prostitutes luring travelers and ripping them off, documented differently to keep the trade in check?

A person who covered this subject many years ago in his popular novel and later a very popular Movie ‘Yakshi’ is Malayatoor Ramakrishnan. Would you like to know about their fascinating world? He writes in his novel about his fictional trip to the world of yakshi’s

Translation excerpted from Gayatri Devi’s blog. Check here for the full chapter

“Thus it was that lying down I saw the world of yakshi’s.
All around inside you see plants you have never seen before growing. Flowers made of sapphires, emeralds, garnets, and topazes bloom on them. A small stream, just like the ones you have seen, dribbles by with a song. But it is not water that is flowing in it, but molten silver. The grass thicket bending into the brook is not green but crimson in color. Huge dragonflies, each about six feet long and with golden wings fly above the stream. Young yakshi children cross the stream on the back of these dragon flies……….

A big path covered with the most beautiful carpet sewn with the skin of golden fish starts at the edge of the stream. This carpet will never get dirty, its colors will never fade because yakshis do not walk on them. They glide and float over it…….

Yakshis have a test, a rite of passage into adulthood. The candidates have to climb up and slither down a black palm tree made out of cast bronze standing under their blue sun, in the nude, three times. ……….. With this test they become mature yakshis. The queen of yakshis will pronounce the winners into mature yakshis in front of all their peers. The queen will dip her finger in the blood of kings and emperors of the earth stored inside diamond-studded crowns and anoint the adult yakshis.
Milk from the milky way is the staple diet of yakshis. It is stipulated, an unbroken law, that once a year, mature yakshis descend into earth to drink the blood of mortal men. If they break this law, their feet will trip over the golden carpet made out of shiny scales.

I witnessed this strange and magical world two or three times from my bed.

Nevertheless I did not quite understand Gayatri Devi’s remarks about Yakshi’s - ‘Their demonization either speaks of an essential definitional ambiguity about "godliness" or can perhaps be explained by a historicist reading of such texts and events’

The Zamorin, the Bhattathiri and the Yakshi - This one is a slightly different story actually where the yakshi falls in love with the exorcist Bhattathiripad and promises not to harm him. As the story goes, she delivers a girl, and leaves the man. As the old scholar is on his deathbed, he tells the story to his son and asks him to erect a temple for the invisible yakshi daughter and worship her…

Not withstanding all the above, the lovely Yakshi will always be in the minds of the people of Kerala especially those born and brought up there. When you walk those lanes between the fields, and as a mild breeze brings the smell of jasmine mixed with drying paddy, you will always be reminded of the lovely lass with those stupendous mammaries and you would gaze up at the palm tree by the side, and wonder.. the danger will battle with the carnal desires…and then you would sigh and walk on…shrugging off the superstitions, to the concrete home with the modern living room, the TV dishing out the latest soap and then to bring you back to reality, the mobile phone would chirp out the latest ring tune after having finally established a link with its master, the network...

References

Venattu Yakshikal – K Ramesan Nair
Legend of Kadamattathu Katthanar
Guptan Namboothiri’s story
A modern Vada Yakshi story from LA
Melankode yakshi’s story
The Kadamatom church
The Pynanarkavu Yakshi :
Kalliangattu neeli
Naaga Yakshi temples
Chottanikara Bhagavathy Aithishyam
Thurston also provides some interesting stories about Yakshis

Tail note - And it was while researching this many months ago that I came across a fine writer & blogger Anuradha Warrier, who helped me later on the Krishna Menon subject. See her take on Yakshi, the novel