Yakshinis appear in all three major South Asian religious traditions — making them one of the oldest and most cross-culturally attested supernatural classes in the subcontinent. In Hindu tradition, they are part of the retinue of Kubera, the god of wealth, and are associated with fertility, trees, hidden treasure, and the generative abundance of the forest. Their male counterparts, the Yakshas, appear in the Mahabharata's famous Yaksha Prashna — the series of riddles posed to Yudhishthira at a sacred lake.
The Uddamareshvara Tantra (attributed to Shiva's instructions to Parvati) contains detailed descriptions of 36 named Yakshinis, each with her specific appearance, the offerings she requires, and the precise powers granted to someone who successfully completes her sadhana. This text treats Yakshinis not as beings to be feared but as beings to be engaged — a transaction between human and nature spirit, with specific terms.
The Yakshini is typically depicted as a voluptuous woman of extraordinary beauty, emerging from or intimately associated with a specific species of tree — pipal, mango, kadamba, or banyan, depending on the Yakshini. Her skin may be dark, forest-green, or golden. She wears heavy gold jewellery and garlands of flowers, and is often shown reaching upward into the branches, her body forming a continuity with the tree.
In encounter accounts, she appears as a beautiful woman standing at the base of a large tree at dusk or night. Her feet may not quite touch the ground. Several accounts across North India describe an overwhelming scent of flowers — specific to her tree's bloom — that arrives before she is seen.
A propitiated Yakshini grants her primary function as a Kubera-servant: material prosperity, hidden treasure revealed, and protection of the household. She can also grant beauty and attract love relationships, according to the Uddamareshvara Tantra's specific prescriptions for each of the 36.
When angered — by cutting her tree, urinating near it, approaching without ritual acknowledgment, or breaking a compact made during sadhana — she causes sudden swelling illness, skin conditions, miscarriage, and afflictions of the lower body. Entire villages near a large felled pipal tree have attributed subsequent misfortune to a displaced Yakshini.
Weaknesses
- ritualCorrect Yakshini propitiation sadhana from Uddamareshvara Tantra
Wards
- substanceRed thread and flowers tied at the tree's base before felling
- ritualRequesting permission from the tree before cutting — in the form of an apology and a small offering
*Péh₂usōn (reconstructed)
Péh₂usōn is a hypothetical Proto‑Indo‑European pastoral guardian reconstructed by comparative scholars from parallels in Greek and Vedic traditions. Proposed as a Graeco‑Aryan ancestor‑figure, the reconstruction describes a protector of flocks, roads, and travellers rather than an attested historical cultic personality.
Abhimanyu
Abhimanyu is a youthful Kuru/Pandava warrior-hero in the Sanskrit epic Mahābhārata. Son of Arjuna and Subhadra, he is famed for entering the Chakravyuha battle formation on the thirteenth day of the Kurukshetra War and dying at age sixteen; his posthumous son Parikshit continues the Kuru line.
Abhinandananātha
Abhinandananātha is the fourth Tīrthaṅkara (ford-maker) of the current Jain cosmic age (avasarpini). Traditional accounts place his birth in Ayodhyā to the Ikshvāku (Solar) dynasty, describe his renunciation and attainment of omniscience beneath a priyangu tree, and record his liberation on Mount Śikharjī.
Acala
Acala (Sanskrit: अचल, 'The Immovable') is a wrathful protective deity (dharmapala) in Vajrayāna and East Asian esoteric Buddhism, classed among the Wisdom Kings (Vidyārāja). He functions as a ritual focus for visualization and mantra practice intended to remove obstacles and bind or destroy hostile forces.
Acalanātha (Acala / Achala)
Acalanātha (also Acala or Achala) is a wrathful deity and dharmapāla — a protector of the Dharma — prominent in Vajrayana and East Asian Mahayana Buddhist contexts. Presented as a fierce, non‑human or semi‑divine protector-figure, Acalanātha functions to defend the teaching and practitioners by removing obstacles and confronting threats to the transmission and practice of Buddhism.
Achyuta
Achyuta (Sanskrit: अच्युत, acyuta) is primarily an epithet/theonym in Vaishnava Hindu tradition applied to Vishnu and Krishna, signifying the divine quality of being 'not fallen' — immutable, infallible, and imperishable. It functions as a devotional name in scripture, liturgy, and Pancharatra lists of divine emanations rather than as an autonomous folkloric spirit.
Acintya
Acintya is an Indonesian Hindu theological-symbolic representation of the ineffable supreme divine principle. In Balinese and Javanese practice it functions as a way to make ultimate reality present in ritual and art—often aniconically as an empty throne (padmasana) or anthropomorphically as a naked, flame-surrounded figure—rather than as a narrative, intervening deity.
Adi (asura)
Adi is attested in modern reference works as the name of an Asura who 'appears in the Matsya Purāṇa.' Beyond this single-line citation in secondary sources, no descriptive material about the figure is provided in the supplied research notes.
Adi Shakti
Adi Shakti (also Adi Parashakti, Mahadevi, Adya Shakti) is the primordial feminine power in Hindu/Shakta theology, regarded as the ultimate reality (Para Brahman) and the source from which all goddesses and gods manifest. She is both an impersonal cosmic principle (Mulaprakriti) and a focus of devotional invocation in temples, mantras, and pilgrimage sites such as Shakti Peethas.
Adi Vinayaka
Adi Vinayaka (Ādi Vināyaka; also called Nara Mukha Vinayaka) is a named iconographic and devotional form of the Hindu god Ganesha portraying the deity with a human head, described in sources as the form before the episode of decapitation by Shiva. It is rarely worshipped and appears in a small number of South Indian shrines and in devotional/musical repertoires.
Aditi
Aditi is a major Vedic goddess in Hindu tradition who personifies the boundless, infinite cosmic principle and functions as the maternal matrix from which many celestial deities (the Ādityas and other groups) are born. In the Vedic hymns she is invoked as a protective liberator who guards petitioners, provides wealth and safety, and frees devotees from hindrances such as sin and sickness.
Agastya
Agastya (also Agathiyar/Agasti) is a revered Vedic and later-period Indian rishi (sage) figure credited in textual traditions as an inspired seer, ascetic, teacher, culture-founder, and attributed author of Vedic, Puranic and Tamil works; in South Indian tradition he is associated with origins of Tamil grammar and Siddha medicine and is identified astronomically with the star Canopus.
Jokhini (Jokkhini) is the Bengali-Assamese regional form — a beautiful spirit haunting rivers and forests who leads travellers astray. Yakshini is the pan-Indian Yaksha-class spirit from Vedic-Puranic cosmology, often a guardian or tree-spirit with a much wider documented tradition.
Community Record
- [1]Uddamareshvara Tantra — the 36 Yakshinis. Shastri, H.P. (1926). Catalogue of Palm-Leaf MSS in the Durbar Library, Nepal, Vol. 3. Calcutta.academic
- [2]Yakshis in Indian art and religion. Coomaraswamy, A.K. (1928). Yaksas: Essays in the Water Cosmology. Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.academic
- [3]Yakshini — Wikipedia. Wikipedia contributors. Yakshini. Wikipedia, 2024.wiki