CHAPTER VII.
SUPERHUMAN BEINGS.
The three sources of superhuman influence from which the Singhalese peasantry expect good or ill are (1) the spirits of disease and poverty; (2) tutelary spirits of various grades and (3) the planetary spirits.
There are several important spirits of disease such as Maha Sohona, Riri Yakâ, Kalu Kumâra Yakâ, Sanni Yakâ.
Maha Sohona is 122 feet high, has the head of a bear with a pike in his left hand and in his right an elephant, whose blood he squeezes out to drink; he inflicts cholera and dysentery and presides over graveyards and where three roads meet and rides on a pig. In ancient times two giants Jayasena and Gotimbara met in single combat; the latter knocked off the head of Jayasena when the god Senasurâ tore off the head of a bear and placed it on Jayasena’s body who rose up alive as the demon Maha Sohona.
Riri Yakâ has a monkey face, carries in one hand a cock and a club in the other with a corpse in his mouth, is present at every death bed, haunts fields and causes fever flux of blood and loss of appetite, and has a crown of fire on his head. He came into the world from the womb of his mother by tearing himself through her heart.
Kalu Kumâra Yakâ is a young devil of a dark complexion who is seen embracing a woman; he prevents conception, delays childbirth and causes puerperal madness. He was a Buddhist arhat with the supernatural power of going through the air. In one of his aerial travels, he saw a beautiful princess and falling in love with her lost at once his superhuman powers and dropped down dead and became the demon Kalu Kumâra Yakâ.
Sanni Yakâ has cobras twisting round his body with a pot of fire near him, holds a rosary in his hand, causes different forms of coma, rides on a horse or lion, has 18 incarnations and forms a trinity with Oddi Yakâ and Huniam Yakâ. He was the son of a queen put to death by her husband who suspected she was unfaithful to his bed. As the queen who was pregnant was being executed, she said that if the charge was false the child in her womb will become a demon and destroy the King and his city. Her corpse gave birth to the Sanni Yakâ who inflicted a mortal disease on his father and depopulated the country.
When any of these demons has afflicted a person the prescribed form of exorcism is a devil dance. In the patient’s garden, a space of about 30 square feet is marked out (atamagala) and bounded with lemon sticks. Within the enclosure, raised about 3 feet from the ground, is erected an altar (samema) for the offerings (pidenitatu). The shape of the altar depends on the afflicting demon—triangular for Riri Yakâ, rectangular for Sanni Yakâ, semicircular for Kalu Kumâra Yakâ and square for Maha Sohona.
The offerings consist of boiled rice, a roasted egg, seven kinds of curries, five kinds of roasted seed, nine kinds of flowers, betel leaves, fried grain, powdered resin and a thread spun by a virgin. There are the usual tom tom beaters; and the exorcist and his assistants are dressed in white and red jackets, with crown shaped head ornaments, and bell attached leglets and armlets, and carrying torches and incense pans.