--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, "yifertw" <yifertw@...> wrote:
> Dear Ven. Sujato,
> Your answer makes me nervous.
o dear!
> 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.
There's something to this idea: in India, even today, the yakkhas
were the gods worshipped by the village-level culture, and, as with
all gods, they are fashioned in the likeness of their worshipers.
(This, of course, has nothing to do with the question of in what
sense the yakkhas 'exist', since according to Buddhism all the
realms are produced by mind, so in that case the yakkha realms would
be produced by yakkha-ish mind states.)
> 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.
It's more important simply to state our reasons and the methods, and
be humble in what we can 'prove'. We commit no fault as long as we
do not overstep our evidence: see, for example, the
Culahatthipadopama Sutta.
> 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?
A class of deva, like the gandhabbas, nagas, etc., according to such
suttas as the Atanatiya.
> > brilliant article by Wijesekera (sorry, i don't have the exact
> title
> > with me now).
I've got the article: 'The philosophical Import of Vedic Yaksa and
Pali Yakkha', in 'Buddhist and Vedic Studies'. The Buddhist usage in
SN 800 is related by Wijesekera to the most developed stage of the
Upanishadic usage :'This, verily, is That. This indeed was That,
even the Actual. He who knows that great yakkha the first-born, as
the actual Brahman, conquers the words.' (Brihadarannyaka 5.4). The
term has come a long way from its brutal roots: and yet it tended to
return to them, so that today Buddhists always understand a yakkha
as a violent demon.
in Dhamma
Bhante Sujato