Deity · Buddhist · c. 100 BCE
The Yakkha
Also called Yaksha, Yakṣa
A Buddhist class of spirits that are neither good nor evil by nature — tree-dwellers and gate-keepers who can eat travellers or take refuge in the Buddha, and frequently do the second after threatening the first.
Narrow source base
The Alavaka encounter is the pattern: a yakkha holds a traveller and puts questions, with the eating of him as the stated penalty for a wrong answer, and ends by taking refuge. What the corpus wants from the category is the way it refuses the classification the rest of this site is built on. A yakkha is not a fallen thing and not an enemy of the good; it is a powerful being with a temper and a jurisdiction, which can be persuaded. Set beside the Christian material, it shows that a tradition can have crowds of dangerous spirits and still have no devil.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
Where it was actually worshipped
Trees, gates and boundary stones — the places rather than a temple
A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
Also known as
- First attested
- The Pali Canon · c. 100 BCE, from oral tradition
- Named there as
- Yakkha
- Rank
- Class of Spirits
- Pantheon
- Buddhist
- Order
- Buddhist pantheon
- Base of operations
- Trees, gates and boundary stones — the places rather than a temple
- Era
- c. 100 BCE
- Traditions
- Buddhist
Traits
- Domain
- Trees, gates and thresholds, riddles, the demanding of tribute
- Traditional form
- Various; usually large, often armed, sometimes fair
Stats
4 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 4 offices attributed to The Yakkha, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.
A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.
- knowledge1
- martial1
- transformation1
- malefic1
knowledge
martial
transformation
malefic
2 texts
Which texts say so, and where do they disagree?
When these texts were written
Each dot is one of the 2 texts that names The Yakkha, placed at that text's approximate date.
A wide spread means the figure was carried across many centuries and traditions; a tight cluster means a single period produced the whole record.
2 texts spanning roughly 800 years
Where the texts differ
- Name: given as Yakkha, Yaksas
- Rank: given as Non-human beings; Of the assembly
Named throughout the suttas as beings encountered at trees, gates and lonely places, dangerous and convertible; several take refuge after being answered.
Included among the classes of beings assembled to hear the vow, alongside the ghosts and the kings of the hells.
Connections
What is it connected to?
No relationship to another figure in this corpus is recorded in the texts cited above. Where an edge exists here it is because a source states it, so an empty section means the sources are silent rather than that the connection is unknown.
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention The Yakkha?
What rank is The Yakkha?
How else is The Yakkha spelled?
What is The Yakkha said to do?
How old is The Yakkha?
Nearest in the corpus
If The Yakkha is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
Mara
The Tempter · Buddhist
He assaults the Buddha under the Bodhi tree, first with armies and then with his daughters. The canon keeps glossing him as craving itself rather than as a being.
The Naga
Serpent Powers · Buddhist
The serpent powers of the Buddhist material — rain-bringers and treasure-keepers who shelter the Buddha under their hoods rather than opposing him, which is what a dragon does almost nowhere else in this corpus.
The Preta
Class of Beings · Buddhist
Beings with enormous stomachs and throats too narrow to swallow. Not a species of demon: a condition you can be reborn into, and eventually leave.
The Daimones
Class of Spirits · Greek
Guardian spirits — Socrates had one that advised him — whose name the Greek scriptures borrowed for evil spirits, permanently poisoning the word.
The Incubus
Class of Spirits · Night-oppression
The Latin class term for a spirit that lies on a sleeper, mentioned in passing by Augustine as a common report and turned by the Malleus Maleficarum, a thousand years later, into a doctrine with a procedure attached.
Artemis
Mistress of Animals · Greek
Huntress and protector of the young, whose Ephesian cult statue looks nothing like her and whose temple gave the ancient world one of its most durable protective formulas.
The books behind The Yakkha
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. They are public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
The Pali Canon
Anonymous; attributed to the Buddha and his disciples · c. 100 BCE, from oral tradition · Pali
Read The Pali Canon in full ↗Cover: CC0 · Faredoka · Wikimedia file page
The Sutra of the Great Vows of Ksitigarbha
Anonymous; known through the Chinese translation attributed to Siksananda · c. 700 CE · Chinese, from a Sanskrit original
Read The Sutra of the Great Vows of Ksitigarbha in full ↗
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.