Tree Ghosts.
Hence in regard to trees great caution is required. A Hindu will never climb one of the varieties of fig, the Ficus Cordifolia, except through dire necessity, and if a Brâhman is forced to ascend the Bel tree or Aegle Marmelos for the purpose of obtaining the sacred trefoil so largely used in Saiva worship, he only does so after offering prayers to the gods in general, and to the Brahmadaitya in particular who may have taken up his abode in this special tree.
These tree ghosts are, it is needless to say, very numerous. Hence most local shrines are constructed under trees, and in one particular tree, the Bîra, the jungle tribes of Mirzapur locate Bâgheswar, the tiger godling, one of their most dreaded deities. In the Konkan, according to Mr. Campbell,[217] the medium or Bhagat who becomes possessed is called Jhâd, or “tree,” apparently because he is a favourite dwelling-place for spirits. In the Dakkhin it is believed that the spirit of the pregnant woman or Churel lives in a tree, and the Abors and Padams of East Bengal believe that spirits in trees kidnap children.[218] Many of these tree spirits appear in the folk-tales. Thus, Devadatta worships a tree which one day suddenly clave in two and a nymph appeared who introduced him inside the tree, where was a heavenly palace of jewels, in which, reclining on a couch, appeared Vidyatprabhâ, the maiden daughter of the king of the Yakshas; in another story the mendicant hears inside a tree the Yaksha joking with his wife.[219] So Daphne is turned into a tree to avoid the pursuit of her lover.
The Brahmaparusha.
But there is another variety of Brâhman ghost who is much dreaded. This is the Brahmaparusha or Brahma Râkshasa. In one of the folk-tales he appears black as soot, with hair yellow as the lightning, looking like a thunder-cloud. He had made himself a wreath of entrails; he wore a sacrificial cord of hair; he was gnawing the flesh of a man’s head and drinking blood out of a skull. In another story these Brahma Râkshasas have formidable tusks, flaming hair, and insatiable hunger. They wander about the forests catching animals and eating them.[220] Mr. Campbell tells a Marhâta legend of a master who became a Brahmaparusha in order to teach grammar to a pupil. He haunted a house at Benares, and the pupil went to take lessons from him. He promised to teach him the whole science in a year on condition that he never left the house. One day the boy went out and learned that the house was haunted, and that he was being taught by a ghost. The boy returned and was ordered by the preceptor to take his bones to Gaya, and perform the necessary ceremonies for the emancipation of his soul. This he did, and the uneasy spirit of the learned man was laid.[221] We have already encountered similar angry Brâhman ghosts, such as Harshu Pânrê and Mahenî.
The Jâk and Jâknî.
The really friendly agricultural sprites are the pair known in some places as the Jâk and Jâknî, and in others as Chordeva and Chordevî, the “thief godlings.” With the Jâk we come on another of these curious survivals from the early mythology in a sadly degraded form. As Varuna, the god of the firmament, has been reduced in these later days to Barun, a petty weather godling, so the Jâk is the modern representative of the Yaksha, who in better times was the attendant of Kuvera, the god of wealth, in which duty he was assisted by the Guhyaka. The character of the Yaksha is not very certain. He was called Punya-janas, “the good people,” but he sometimes appears as an imp of evil. In the folk-tales, it must be admitted, the Yakshas have an equivocal reputation. In one story the female, or Yakshinî, bewilders travellers at night, makes horns grow on their foreheads, and finally devours them; in another the Yakshas have, like the Churel, feet turned the wrong way and squinting eyes; in a third they separate the hero from the heroine because he failed to make due offerings to them on his wedding day. On the other hand, in a fourth tale the Yakshinî is described as possessed of heavenly beauty; she appears again when a sacrifice is made in a cemetery to get her into the hero’s power, as a heavenly maiden beautifully adorned, seated in a chariot of gold surrounded by lovely girls; and lastly, a Brâhman meets some Buddhist ascetics, performs the Uposhana vow, and would have become a god, had it not been that a wicked man compelled him by force to take food in the evening, and so he was re-born as a Guhyaka.[222]