[159] Upham’s “Sacred and Historical Books of Ceylon,” iii. 287.
[160] Afanasief says (P.V.S. iii. 588), “As regards the word yaga (yega, Polish jedza, jadza, jedzi-baba, Slovak, jenzi, jenzi, jezi-baba, Bohemian, jezinka, Galician yazya) it answers to the Sanskrit ahi = snake.”
Shchepkin (in his work on “Russian Fable-lore,” p. 109) says: “Yaga, instead of yagaya, means properly noisy, scolding, and must be connected with the root yagat’ = to brawl, to scold, still preserved in Siberia. The accuracy of this etymology is confirmed by the use, in the speech of the common people, of the designation Yaga Baba for a quarrelsome, scolding old woman.”
Kastorsky, in his “Slavonic Mythology,” p. 138, starts a theory of his own. “The name Yaga Baba, I take to be yakaya baba, nycyakaya baba, and I render it by anus quædam.” Bulgarin (Rossiya, ii. 322) refers the name to a Finnish root. According to him, “Jagga-lema, in Esthonian, means to quarrel or brawl, jagga-lemine means quarrelling or brawling.” There is some similarity between the Russian form of the word, and the Singalese name for a (male) demon, yaka, which is derived from the Pali yakkho, as is the synonymous term yakseya from the Sanskrit yaksha (see the valuable paper on Demonology in Ceylon by Dandris de Silva Gooneratne Modliar in the “Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society,” 1865-6). Some Slavonic philologists derive yaga from a root meaning to eat (in Russian yest’). This corresponds with the derivation of the word yaksha contained in the following legend: “The Vishnu Purāna, i. 5, narrates that they (the Yakshas) were produced by Brahmā as beings emaciate with hunger, of hideous aspect, and with long beards, and that, crying out ‘Let us eat,’ they were denominated Yakshas (fr. jaksh, to eat).” Monier Williams’s “Sanskrit Dictionary,” p. 801. In character the Yaga often resembles a Rákshasí.
[161] Afanasief, i. No. 3 b. From the Voroneje Government.
[162] Khudyakof, No. 60.
[163] See Grimm, KM. iii. 97-8. Cf. R. Köhler in “Orient und Occident,” ii. 112.
[164] Grimm, No. 79. “Die Wassernixe.”
[165] Asbjörnsen and Moe, No. 14. Dasent, p. 362. “The Widow’s Son.”
[166] Hahn, No. 1.