One of the best-known legends in Japan is that concerning the fiend Shudendozi, who derives his name from the two characteristics of possessing the face of a child and being a heavy drinker. The child-face is so emphasised in the stories that one may suspect either that his fair victims were enticed to his stronghold by his air of innocence, or else that there is some hint as to maternal longings in the fable.
Fig. 27.—Cruelty and Lust (Japanese).
At the beginning of the eleventh century, when Ichijo II. was Emperor, lived the hero Yorimitsa. In those days the people of Kiyoto were troubled by an evil spirit which abode near the Rasho Gate. One night, when merry with his companions, Ichijo said, ‘Who dare go and defy the demon of the Rasho Gate, and set up a token that he has been there?’ ‘That dare I,’ answered Tsuma, who, having donned his mail, rode out in the bleak night to the Rasho Gate. Having written his name on the gate, returning, his horse shivers with fear, and a huge hand coming out of the gate seized the knight’s helmet. He struggled in vain. He then cuts off the demon’s arm, and the demon flies howling. Tsuma takes the demon’s arm home, and locks it in a box. One night the demon, having the shape of Tsuma’s aunt, came and said, ‘I pray you show me the arm of the fiend.’ ‘I will show it to no man, and yet to thee will I show it,’ replied he. When the box is opened a black cloud enshrouds the aunt, and the demon disappears with the arm. Thereafter he is more troublesome than ever. The demon carried off the fairest virgins of Kiyoto, ravished and ate them, no beauty being left in the city. The Emperor commands Yorimitsa to destroy him. The hero, with four trusty knights and a great captain, went to the hidden places of the mountains. They fell in with an old man, who invited them into his dwelling, and gave them wine to drink; and when they were going he presented them with wine. This old man was a mountain-god. As they proceeded they met a beautiful lady washing blood from garments in a valley, weeping bitterly. In reply to their inquiries she said the demon had carried her off and kept her to wash his clothes, meaning when weary of her to eat her. ‘I pray your lordships to help me!’ The six heroes bid her lead them to the ogre’s cave. One hundred devils mounted guard before it. The woman first went in and told him they had come. The ogre called them in, meaning to eat them. Then they saw Shudendozi, a monster with the face of a little child. They offered him wine, which flew to his head: he becomes merry and sleeps, and his head is cut off. The head leaps up and tries to bite Yorimitsa, but he had on two helmets. When all the devils are slain, he brings the head of Shudendozi to the Emperor. In a similar story of the same country the lustful ogre by no means possesses Shudendozi’s winning visage, as may be seen by the popular representation of him ([Fig. 27]), with a knight’s hand grasping his throat.
A Singhalese demon of like class is Bahirawa, who takes his name from the hill of the same name, towering over Kandy, in which he is supposed to reside. The legend runs that the astrologers told a king whose queen was afflicted by successive miscarriages, that she would never be delivered of a healthy child unless a virgin was sacrificed annually on the top of this hill. This being done, several children were borne to him. When his queen was advanced in years the king discontinued this observance, and consequently many diseases fell upon the royal family and the city, after which the annual sacrifice was resumed, and continued until 1815, when the English occupied Kandy. The method of the sacrifice was to bind a young girl to a stake on the top of the hill with jungle-creepers. Beside her, on an altar, were placed boiled rice and flowers; incantations were uttered, and the girl left, to be generally found dead of fright in the morning. An old woman, who in early years had undergone this ordeal, survived, and her safety no doubt co-operated with English authority to diminish the popular fear of Bahirawa, but still few natives would be found courageous enough to ascend the hill at night.
One of the lustful demons of Ceylon is Calu Cumara, that is, the Black Prince. He is supposed to have seven different apparitions,—prince of fire, of flowers, of groves, of graves, of eye-ointments, of the smooth body, and of sexuality. The Saga says he was a Buddhist priest, who by exceeding asceticism and accumulated merits had gained the power to fly, but passion for a beautiful woman caused him to fall. By disappointment in the love for which he had parted with so much his heart was broken, and he became a demon. In this condition he is for ever tortured by the passion of lustful desire, the only satisfaction of which he can obtain being to afflict young and fair women with illness. He is a very dainty demon, and can be soothed if great care is taken in the offerings made to him, which consist of rice of finest quality, plantains, sugar-cane, oranges, cocoa-nuts, and cakes. He is of dark-blue complexion and his raiment black.
In Singhalese demonolatry there are seven female demons of lust, popularly called the Madana Yaksenyo. These sisters are—Cama (lust); Cini (fire); Mohanee (ignorance); Rutti (pleasure); Cala (maturity); Mal (flowers); Puspa (perfumes). They are the abettors of seduction, and are invoked in the preparation of philtres.[3]
‘It were well,’ said Jason to Medea, ‘that the female race should not exist; then would there not have been any evil among men.’[4] The same sentiment is in Milton—
Oh why did God,
Creator wise, that peopled highest heaven