Riri Yaka, the blood demon

Riri Yaka, the blood demon, is among the most feared yakku of the lowland Sinhala pantheon, ranked in folk tradition immediately below Mahasona. He is imagined with a red, blood-drenched body and a monkey's or fierce animal face, frequenting cremation grounds and battlefields. He claims dominion over blood: haemorrhages, anaemia and bleeding sicknesses are read as signs of his presence in a victim, who is said to grow pale and listless. At the bedside of the dying he is glimpsed as a dwarfish death-apparition, the Maru Avatara. His affliction is removed through dedicated offering-rites and masked dance within the tovil complex.

Domains

• blood and haemorrhage
• death and the dying

Powers

• to inflict haemorrhage and diseases of the blood
• to appear as a dwarfish apparition to those near death

Epithets

• මරු අවතාරය (Maru Avatara, the death-form)

Relations

• rival: Mahasona, the great graveyard demon

Sources

• Gananath Obeyesekere, 'The Ritual Drama of the Sanni Demons: Collective Representations of Disease in Ceylon,' Comparative Studies in Society and History 11, no. 2 (1969): 174-216.
• Paul Wirz, Exorcism and the Art of Healing in Ceylon (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1954).