Sinhala folk yakku · deity · Sinhala folk yakku traditional religion; continuing · deity
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
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).