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)Paul Wirz, Exorcism and the Art of Healing in Ceylon (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1954). (secondary)

Relations

• rival: Mahasona, the great graveyard demonRiri Yaka is ranked in the demonological hierarchy immediately below Mahasona, the two standing together as the most feared of the cemetery yakku and propitiated jointly in graveyard exorcisms.Paul Wirz, Exorcism and the Art of Healing in Ceylon (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1954). (secondary)

Sources

• Riri Yaka (Reeri Yakseya) is the blood demon of Sinhala folk religion, second in dread only to Mahasona, who afflicts the living with haemorrhage and blood disease and is propitiated in tovil exorcism.: 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. (secondary); Paul Wirz, Exorcism and the Art of Healing in Ceylon (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1954). (secondary)