Dear Ven. Sujato,
Your answer makes me nervous.
According to some articles I read, there was a wild guess that
yakkha actually is the aboriginal tribes in India, they are
distorted as ugly, wild, uncivilized and semi-ghost satta after
Arian people's invasion. They lived in dark and wild forests and
treated as the aboriginal people by the "civilized"invaders. They do
not receive the respect they deserved as a distict culture.
In my book-reading groups, I always explain yakkha as above-
stated. I am nervous because I keep giving "wrong" explanation to
beginners in our Buddism discussion.
There are five kinds of "satta"(it will be six if counting Asura),
they are deva, maanusa, niraya, peta and tiracchaana.
May you give me directions, according to which sutta, yakkha is
classified as one of these five different satta? Is it Deva, Maanusa
or Peta?

Yifer

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, "Bhante Sujato" <sujato@...> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
>
> >
> > > Is there any explanation to call a devata yakkha?
> >
> > You might check the entry for yakkha in Malalasekera's
> > Dictionary of Pali Proper Names. There are many sorts of
> > beings who are on occasion called yakkhas, besides actual
> > yakkhas.
>
> The derivation and Vedic antecedents of 'yakkha' are discussed in
a
> brilliant article by Wijesekera (sorry, i don't have the exact
title
> with me now). I have previously recommended his article on the
> gandhabba: both of these are very old conceptions, and the Vedic
> background provides essential clues for understanding the
sometimes
> puzzling usage in the Pali.
>
> In the Upaali Sutta even the Buddha is called a
> > yakkha!
> >
> If i remember rightly, Thich Minh Chau points out that the Chinese
> here has 'eye', seeming to refer back to an original '- y-akkha',
with
> the y perhaps orginally just a sandhi.
>
> Venerable Sujato