Pishacha

The smell reaches you first, ash and cold smoke drifting off the cremation ground long after the last pyre has burned down. Somewhere past the heaps of cinder and bone, something is feeding. It has red eyes that bulge from a shrunken, dark face, veins standing up along its limbs like cords under wet cloth, and it crosses the dark without a sound. This is a pishacha, and the body it has found was not properly burned.

The oldest records of these creatures sit in the Vedas. The Rigveda names them, and the Atharvaveda names them far more often, counting them among the pests of the spirit world and setting whole hymns and incantations against them. There they are called kravyad, eaters of raw flesh, and that phrase may be the root of the word pishacha itself. Ranked below the rakshasas, they were held to be more malignant than almost anything else that moved at night, the vilest of the malevolent beings.

Where they came from depends on who is telling it. The Mahabharata says the first pishachas were made by Brahma. Other accounts hand them a stranger parentage, calling them the sons of Krodha, whose name means anger, or the children of the sage Kashyapa and Krodhavasa, a daughter of Daksha. A different line makes them descend from a daughter of Daksha named Pishacha outright. The stories disagree, and none of them works very hard to reconcile the others.

There is a second way to become one, and it has nothing to do with divine parentage. When the funeral rites are skipped or bungled, the soul of the dead can be left stranded, unable to pass on. It curdles into a pishacha: blind, deformed, unable to eat or drink, suffering without end, and drawn all the same toward the living, whose warmth and smell it can sense even without sight. That is the bleak center of the belief. The thing that hunts you may once have been someone whose family simply got the ceremony wrong.

They left their deepest mark on literature rather than ritual. The poet Gunadhya, exiled and forbidden the polished languages of the court, is said to have wandered into the Vindhya forest and learned the speech of the pishachas, a rough tongue called Paishachi. In it he composed the Brihatkatha, the Great Story, one of the lost monuments of Indian narrative, later drawn upon by the poets Kshemendra and Somadeva. That a demon language should carry one of the subcontinent’s great collections of tales is the sort of turn the tradition seems comfortable with.

The name did double duty. In the Nilamata Purana, a seventh-century text, the valley of Kashmir is said to have belonged to two peoples, the Nagas and the Pishachas, and older literature attaches the name Pishacha to the Dardic tribes of the mountainous northwest, their languages grouped as Paishachi. The scholar George Grierson argued that this was othering at work, Aryan authors branding the strangers on their frontier with the name of a flesh-eating ghoul, so that a living human community has come down to us wearing a demon’s mask.

They appear in the epics too, and not always as solitary hunters. In the Mahabharata pishachas take the field, fighting alongside Ghatotkacha against Karna, and elsewhere serving the opposite side, harnessed as the horses that draw the chariot of Alambusha into battle. For creatures of the burning ground, they keep unexpectedly grand company.

What makes a pishacha dangerous is not strength but slipperiness. It can take any shape it pleases and can vanish from sight entirely, so the form it wears tells you nothing about what it is. It feeds on flesh, and on something subtler, the vital energy of the living. Its worst trick is to enter a person and stay there, warping their thoughts from the inside, and the victim falls into fits, sickness, or madness that no ordinary cause explains.

Against this there are defenses, and they are very old. The right mantra, correctly spoken, can loosen a pishacha’s grip and force it out of the body it has seized. Communities also bought a kind of peace by feeding the creatures, setting aside a share of the offerings at certain festivals so the pishachas would take their portion and leave the living alone. The bargain is telling. You did not defeat a pishacha so much as manage it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Pishacha?

A pishacha is a flesh-eating demon of Hindu and Buddhist mythology, regarded as the lowest and most malignant class of night-spirits, ranked even below the rakshasas. First named in the Vedas, it is described as an eater of raw flesh that haunts cremation grounds and preys on the living.

What does a Pishacha do to humans?

Pishachas feed on human flesh and on the vital energy of the living, and they can possess a person, entering the body and twisting the victim’s thoughts. Those they possess fall into sickness, fits, or madness with no ordinary cause. They can also shapeshift and turn invisible, so they are difficult to recognize or avoid.

How do you protect against or get rid of a Pishacha?

The main defense is the correct mantra, which is believed to loosen a pishacha’s grip and drive it out of a person it has possessed. Communities also made offerings to them at certain festivals, setting aside a share of food so the creatures would be satisfied and leave the living in peace.

Where do Pishachas come from?

Accounts of their origin disagree. The Mahabharata says the first pishachas were created by Brahma, while other legends call them the sons of Krodha (“anger”) or the offspring of the sage Kashyapa and Krodhavasa, a daughter of Daksha. Separately, a person whose funeral rites are not properly performed may become a pishacha, left blind, deformed, and unable to die fully.

What is the Paishachi language?

Paishachi was regarded as the language of the pishachas, and the poet Gunadhya is said to have learned it in the Vindhya forest and used it to compose the lost epic Brihatkatha. The name Pishacha was also applied to the Dardic peoples of northwest Kashmir, whose languages scholars such as George Grierson grouped as Paishachi.

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