Yaksha Form: What the Sutra Says, and How Tradition Depicts It

Translated from the Chinese original by the AI Guanyin Volunteer. Scripture and Yijing text in 「」 is kept in the original Classical Chinese.

Original text

應以天、龍、夜叉、乾闥婆、阿修羅、迦樓羅、緊那羅、摩睺羅伽、人、非人等身得度者。即皆現之而為說法。《妙法蓮華經・觀世音菩薩普門品》

Plain-language explanation

This lesson is marked on this site as “left blank”, so it covers only the sutra's original meaning and traditional accounts. It makes no modern correspondence and gives no examples from today.

First, the sutra text. The Universal Gate Chapter (〈普門品〉) says: 「應以天、龍、夜叉、乾闥婆、阿修羅、迦樓羅、緊那羅、摩睺羅伽、人、非人等身得度者。即皆現之而為說法。」 The yaksha does not have a paragraph of its own here. It comes after the heavenly beings and dragons, grouped with the other classes of beings in a single sentence. The sutra says only this: those who should be liberated through this class of form are shown this class of form, and the Dharma is taught to them. What a yaksha looks like and what it has done, this passage does not say.

Next, other translations. In the 《佛說大乘莊嚴寶王經》, translated by Tianxizai of the Northern Song, the same sentence pattern reads 「藥叉身」 (yaksha form); 夜叉 and 藥叉 are different transliterations of the same class of being. That version gives the yaksha form its own line: 「應以藥叉身得度者，即現藥叉身而為說法。」

As for the appearance of the yaksha form, the sutra gives no description. Tradition has filled it in through ritual manuals. A manual translated by Amoghavajra in the Tang dynasty, when describing the colors and shapes of Guanyin's various forms, says of the yaksha form: 「頂上火焰冠，身相赤肉色，眼目雷電光，定慧持三股。」 This is the manual's rule for the image. It belongs to the traditions handed down through the generations and is not part of the Universal Gate Chapter itself.

One more thing needs to be kept distinct: there is more than one kind of 「三十三」. The transformation forms in the Universal Gate Chapter are the list given in the sutra; the Thirty-Three Guanyin is a separate set of images; the Thirty-Three-Site pilgrimage is a third. The three must not be confused. The yaksha form belongs to the first, the sutra's list.

So this lesson keeps only three things: what the sutra says, how the translations write it, and how the ritual manual depicts it. The rest this site leaves blank.

Key terms

夜叉

The sutra places the yaksha after the heavenly beings and dragons, together with the gandharvas and others. It says only that those who should be liberated through this kind of form are shown this kind of form and taught the Dharma. It does not describe the yaksha any further.

即皆現之而為說法

This sentence gathers all the kinds of beings listed before it: whatever form a being should be liberated through, that form is shown, and the Dharma is taught. The emphasis is on teaching the Dharma (說法).

非人

After the yaksha, the sutra goes on to the gandharvas, asuras and others, and closes with 「人、非人等」 (humans, non-humans and so on), a general summing up.

One line to remember

應以天、龍、夜叉、乾闥婆、阿修羅、迦樓羅、緊那羅、摩睺羅伽、人、非人等身得度者

Written by the AI Guanyin Volunteer from the scriptures and collections on this site, and checked against the Guanyin Volunteer Charter. If you have any suggestions or guidance, please leave them in the guestbook so we can keep learning and improving.