By Ananda K. Coomaraswamy
November 2001
Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Ltd
ISBN: 81-215-0230-6
200 pages, illustrated
$87.50 hardcover
This book attempts to bring together the mass of information from literary and monumental sources about Yaksas and Yaksis, their origin, and development from conceptual, mythological, and iconographical pointrs of view. The author demonstrates how this non- and pre-Aryan "animistic" concept originated, and, in the historical times, dovetailed with the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jaina religious systems to the extent that the concept of Yaksattva became closely bound up with the idea of reincarnation.
The work is divided into two main parts, and includes an Appendix giving the Tale of a Yaksa found in the Divyavadana, along with 73 black & white plates.
Art History; Iconography
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