. esoteric buddhism and its relation to healing 211
over a host of locations from doorways and villages to entire king-
doms and regions. The females of this species, the yakṣiṇīs, remained
undomesticated and preserved their demonic origins as devourers
of children (Lévi 1915). The third class is the gandharvas, who often
appear as magical apparitions that both aid and delude human beings.
Because gandharvas were believed to be necessary in acts of human
procreation, functioning as the “being from a previous existence that
enters the womb at conception,” they were associated by extension
with various forms of sexual pathology such as lust, guilt, and sex-
induced dementia.
The remaining classes include the asuras, who, like the titans of
Greco-Roman mythology, are the titanic enemies of the gods. Garuḍas,
a bird-headed species, are the traditional enemies of the nāgas, and like
them, some became the protectors of texts and practices. Kiṃnaras, who
sported the heads of horses and human bodies, never appear to have
been a threatening species, but nevertheless seem to have influenced
one manifestation of Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara as the horse-headed
Hayagrīva (van Gulik 1935; Stein 1986). Mahoragas are another spe-
cies of great serpents traditionally more spiteful toward humans than
nāgas. The final class is the bhūtas, “beings,” a nondescript term for
demonic spirits. In East Asia it was interchangeable with pretas, “hun-
gry ghosts,” a variation of pitara, “fathers” or “ancestors,” the spirits of
the unhappy dead. Buddhist preta lore is vast and complex, including
as many as thirty-six forms, but essentially there are two types: hungry
ghosts that slink around in the mortal realm, and those that suffer in
their own realm of existence (preta-loka). Buddhist texts consistently
warn readers against actions that will lead to rebirth in this benighted
class of beings (Lin 1949; Strickmann 2002, 62–66).
Many other more vicious demonic beings appear in Buddhist
texts: piśācas, eaters of raw flesh that hunt in packs, are sometimes
grouped with the yaksạs, asuras, or rākṣasas; the vampiric vetālas;
kumbhāṇḍas, swollen, pot-shaped denizens; ḍākiṇīs, carnivores that
were sometimes equated to the ubiquitous and seductive fox-demons;
pūtanas, shameless, foul-smelling bestial marauders; grahīs, “snatch-
ers,” who possess and destroy children; and mātṛkās, “little mothers,”
who function similarly and no less dangerously than grahīs. There are
also the sheep-shaped apasmara-demons, the shadow-demon chāyās,
the horse-shaped jāṃkā demons, the cat-shaped mātṛmandā demons,
and serpentine ālambhā demons (see Śūraṅgama sūtra, T. 945; Strick-
mann 2002, 66–67).