Gaki
—“Venerable Nagasena, are there such things as demons in the world?”
—“Yes, O King.”
—“Do they ever leave that condition of existence?”
—“Yes, they do.”
—“But, if so, why is it that the remains of those demons are never found?”...
—“Their remains are found, O King.... The remains of bad demons can be found in the form of worms and beetles and ants and snakes and scorpions and centipedes.”...
—The Questions of King Milinda.
I
There are moments in life when truths but dimly known before—beliefs first vaguely reached through multiple processes of reasoning—suddenly assume the vivid character of emotional convictions. Such an experience came to me the other day, on the Suruga coast. While resting under the pines that fringed the beach, something in the vital warmth and luminous peace of the hour—some quivering rapture of wind and light—very strangely bestirred an old belief of mine: the belief that all being is One. One I felt myself to be with the thrilling of breeze and the racing of wave,—with every flutter of shadow and flicker of sun,—with the azure of sky and sea,—with the great green hush of the land. In some new and wonderful way I found myself assured that there never could have been a beginning,—that there never could be an end. Nevertheless, the ideas of the moment were not new: the novelty of the experience was altogether in the peculiar intensity with which they presented themselves; making me feel that the flashing dragon-flies, and the long gray sand-crickets, and the shrilling sémi overhead, and the little red crabs astir under the roots of the pines, were all of them brothers and sisters. I seemed to understand, as never before, how the mystery that is called the Soul of me must have quickened in every form of past existence, and must as certainly continue to behold the sun, for other millions of summers, through eyes of other countless shapes of future being. And I tried to think the long slow thoughts of the long gray crickets,—and the thoughts of the darting, shimmering dragonflies,—and the thoughts of the basking, trilling cicadæ,—and the thoughts of the wicked little crabs that lifted up their claws from between the roots of the pines.
Presently I discovered myself wondering whether the consequence of such thoughts could have anything to do with the recombination of my soul-dust in future spheres of existence. For thousands of years the East has been teaching that what we think or do in this life really decides,—through some inevitable formation of-atom-tendencies, or polarities,—the future place of our substance, and the future state of our sentiency. And the belief is worth thinking about—though no amount of thinking can enable us either to confirm or to disprove it. Very possibly, like other Buddhist doctrines, it may adumbrate some cosmic truth; but its literal assertions I doubt, because I must doubt the power ascribed to thought. By the whole infinite past I have been moulded, within and without: how should the impulse of a moment reshape me against the weight of the eternities?... Buddhism indeed answers how, and that astounding answer is irrefutable,—but I doubt....
Anyhow, acts and thoughts, according to Buddhist doctrine, are creative. Visible matter is made by acts and thoughts,—even the universe of stars, and all that has form and name, and all the conditions of existence. What we think or do is never for the moment only, but for measureless time: it signifies some force directed to the shaping of worlds,—to the making of future bliss or pain. Remembering this, we may raise ourselves to the zones of the Gods. Ignoring it, we may deprive ourselves even of the right to be reborn among men, and may doom ourselves, though innocent of the crimes that cause rebirth in hell, to reënter existence in the form of animals, or of insects, or of goblins,—gaki.1
So it depends upon ourselves whether we are to become insects or goblins hereafter; and in the Buddhist system the difference between insects and goblins is not so well defined as might be supposed. The belief in a mysterious relation between ghosts and insects, or rather between spirits and insects, is a very ancient belief in the East, where it now assumes innumerable forms,—some unspeakably horrible, others full of weird beauty.
“The White Moth” of Mr. Quiller-Couch would not impress a Japanese reader as novel; for the night-moth or the butterfly figures in many a Japanese poem and legend as the soul of a lost wife. The night-cricket’s thin lament is perhaps the sorrowing of a voice once human;—the strange red marks upon the heads of cicadæ are characters of spirit-names;—dragon-flies and grasshoppers are the horses of the dead. All these are to be pitied with the pity that is kin to love. But the noxious and dangerous insects represent the results of another quality of karma,—that which produces goblins and demons. Grisly names have been given to some of these insects,—as, for example, Jigokumushi, or “Hell-insect,” to the ant-lion; and Kappa-mushi, to a gigantic water-beetle which seizes frogs and fish, and devours them alive, thus realizing, in a microcosmic way, the hideous myth of the Kappa, or River-goblin. Flies, on the other hand, are especially identified with the world of hungry ghosts. How often, in the season of flies, have I heard some persecuted toiler exclaim, “Kyō no hai wa, gaki no yo da ne?” (The flies to-day, how like gaki they are!)
II
In the old Japanese, or, more correctly speaking, Chinese Buddhist literature relating to the gaki, the Sanscrit names of the gaki are given in a majority of cases; but some classes of gaki described have only Chinese names. As the Indian belief reached Japan by way of China and Korea, it is likely to have received a peculiar colouring in the course of its journey. But, in a general way, the Japanese classification of gaki corresponds closely to the Indian classification of the pretas.
The place of gaki in the Buddhist system is but one degree removed from the region of the hells, or Jigokudō,—the lowest of all the States of Existence. Above the Jigokudō is the Gakidō, or World of Hungry Spirits; above the Gakidō is the Chikushōdō, or World of Animals; and above this, again, is the Shuradō, a region of perpetual fighting and slaughter. Higher than these is placed the Ningendō, or World of Mankind.
Now a person released from hell, by exhaustion of the karma that sent him there, is seldom reborn at once into the zone of human existence, but must patiently work his way upward thither, through all the intermediate states of being. Many of the gaki have been in hell.
But there are gaki also who have not been in hell. Certain kinds or degrees of sin may cause a person to be reborn as a gaki immediately after having died in this world. Only the greatest degree of sin condemns the sinner directly to hell. The second degree degrades him to the Gakidō. The third causes him to be reborn as an animal.
Japanese Buddhism recognizes thirty-six principal classes of gaki. “Roughly counting,” says the Shōbō-nen-jō-kyō, “we find thirty-six classes of gaki; but should we attempt to distinguish all the different varieties, we should find them to be innumerable.” The thirty-six classes form two great divisions, or orders. One comprises all “Gaki-World-dwellers” (Gaki-Sekai-Ju);—that is to say, all Hungry Spirits who remain in the Gakidō proper, and are, therefore, never seen by mankind. The other division is called Nin-chū-Jū, or “Dwellers among men”: these gaki remain always in this world, and are sometimes seen.
There is yet another classification of gaki, according to the character of their penitential torment. All gaki suffer hunger and thirst; but there are three degrees of this suffering. The Muzai-gaki represent the first degree: they must hunger and thirst uninterruptedly, without obtaining any nourishment whatever. The Shōzai-gaki suffer only in the second degree: they are able to feed occasionally upon impure substances. The Usai-gaki are more fortunate: they can eat such remains of food as are thrown away by men, and also the offerings of food set before the images of the gods, or before the tablets of the ancestors. The last two classes of gaki are especially interesting, because they are supposed to meddle with human affairs.
Before modern science introduced exact knowledge of the nature and cause of certain diseases, Buddhists explained the symptoms of such diseases by the hypothesis of gaki. Certain kinds of intermittent fever, for example, were said to be caused by a gaki entering the human body for the sake of nourishment and warmth. At first the patient would shiver with cold, because the gaki was cold. Then, as the gaki gradually became warm, the chill would pass, to be succeeded by a burning heat. At last the satiated haunter would go away, and the fever disappear; but upon another day, and usually at an hour corresponding to that of the first attack, a second fit of ague would announce the return of the gaki. Other zymotic disorders could be equally well explained as due to the action of gaki.
In the Shōbō-nen-jō-kyō a majority of the thirty-six kinds of gaki are associated with putrescence, disease, and death. Others are plainly identified with insects. No particular kind of gaki is identified by name with any particular kind of insect; but the descriptions suggest conditions of insect-life; and such suggestions are re-ënforced by a knowledge of popular superstitions. Perhaps the descriptions are vague in the case of such spirits as the Jiki-ketsu-gaki, or Blood-suckers; the Jiki-niku-gaki, or Flesh-eaters; the Jiki-da-gaki, or * * * * * *-eaters; the Jiki-fun-gaki, or * * * *-eaters; the Jiki-doku-gaki, or Poison-eaters; the Jiki-fu-gaki, or Wind-eaters; the Jiki-ké-gaki, or Smell-eaters; the Jiki-kwa-gaki, or Fire-eaters (perhaps they fly into lamps?); the Shikkō-gaki, who devour corpses and cause pestilence; the Shinen-gaki, who appear by night as wandering fires; the Shin-ko-gaki, or Needle-mouthed; and the Kwaku-shin-gaki, or Cauldron-bodied,—each a living furnace, filled with flame that keeps the fluids of its body humming like a boiling pot. But the suggestion of the following excerpts2 will not be found at all obscure:—
“Jiki-man-gaki.—These gaki can live only by eating the wigs of false hair with which the statues of certain divinities are decorated.... Such will be the future condition of persons who steal objects of value from Buddhist temples.
“Fujō-ko-hyaku-gaki.—These gaki can eat only street filth and refuse. Such a condition is the consequence of having given putrid or unwholesome food to priests or nuns, or pilgrims in need of alms.
“Cho-ken-ju-jiki-netsu-gaki.—These are the eaters of the refuse of funeral-pyres and of the clay of graves.... They are the spirits of men who despoiled Buddhist temples for the sake of gain.
“Ju-chū-gaki.—These spirits are born within the wood of trees, and are tormented by the growing of the grain.... Their condition is the result of having cut down shade-trees for the purpose of selling the timber. Persons who cut down the trees in Buddhist cemeteries or temple-grounds are especially likely to become ju-chū-gaki.”3
Moths, flies, beetles, grubs, worms, and other unpleasant creatures seem thus to be indicated. But some kinds of gaki cannot be identified with insects,—for example, the species called Jiki-hō-gaki, or “Doctrine-eaters.” These can exist only by hearing the preaching of the Law of the Buddha in some temple. While they hear such preaching, their torment is assuaged; but at all other times they suffer agonies unspeakable. To this condition are liable after death all Buddhist priests or nuns who proclaim the law for the mere purpose of making money.... Also there are gaki who appear sometimes in beautiful human shapes. Such are the Yoku-shiki-gaki, spirits of lewdness,—corresponding in some sort to the incubi and succubi of our own Middle Ages. They can change their sex at will, and can make their bodies as large or as small as they please. It is impossible to exclude them from any dwelling, except by the use of holy charms and spells, since they are able to pass through an orifice even smaller than the eye of a needle. To seduce young men, they assume beautiful feminine shapes,—often appearing at wine parties as waitresses or dancing girls. To seduce women they take the form of handsome lads. This state of Yoku-shiki-gaki is a consequence of lust in some previous human existence; but the supernatural powers belonging to their condition are results of meritorious Karma which the evil Karma could not wholly counterbalance.
Even concerning the Yoku-shiki-gaki, however, it is plainly stated that they may take the form of insects. Though wont to appear in human shape, they can assume the shape of any animal or other creature, and “fly freely in all directions of space,”—or keep their bodies “so small that mankind cannot see them....” All insects are not necessarily gaki; but most gaki can assume the form of insects when it serves their purpose.
III
Grotesque as these beliefs now seem to us, it was not unnatural that ancient Eastern fancy should associate insects with ghosts and devils. In our visible world there are no other creatures so wonderful and so mysterious; and the true history of certain insects actually realizes the dreams of mythology. To the minds of primitive men, the mere facts of insect-metamorphosis must have seemed uncanny; and what but goblinry or magic could account for the monstrous existence of beings so similar to dead leaves, or to flowers, or to joints of grass, that the keenest human sight could detect their presence only when they began to walk or to fly? Even for the entomologist of to-day, insects remain the most incomprehensible of creatures. We have learned from him that they must be acknowledged “the most successful of organized beings” in the battle for existence;—that the delicacy and the complexity of their structures surpass anything ever imagined of marvellous before the age of the microscope;—that their senses so far exceed our own in refinement as to prove us deaf and blind by comparison. Nevertheless the insect world remains a world of hopeless enigmas. Who can explain for us the mystery of the eyes of a myriad facets, or the secret of the ocular brains connected with them? Do those astounding eyes perceive the ultimate structure of matter? does their vision pierce opacity, after the manner of the Röntgen rays? (Or how interpret the deadly aim of that ichneumon-fly which plunges its ovipositor through solid wood to reach the grub embedded in the grain?) What, again, of those marvellous ears in breasts and thighs and knees and feet,—ears that hear sounds beyond the limit of human audition? and what of the musical structures evolved to produce such fairy melody? What of the ghostly feet that walk upon flowing water? What of the chemistry that kindles the firefly’s lamp,—making the cold and beautiful light that all our electric science cannot imitate? And those newly discovered, incomparably delicate organs for which we have yet no name, because our wisest cannot decide the nature of them—do they really, as some would suggest, keep the insect-mind informed of things unknown to human sense,—visibilities of magnetism, odours of light, tastes of sound?... Even the little that we have been able to learn about insects fills us with the wonder that is akin to fear. The lips that are hands, and the horns that are eyes, and the tongues that are drills; the multiple devilish mouths that move in four ways at once; the living scissors and saws and boring-pumps and brace-bits; the exquisite elfish weapons which no human skill can copy, even in the finest watch-spring steel—what superstition of old ever dreamed of sights like these? Indeed, all that nightmare ever conceived of faceless horror, and all that ecstasy ever imagined of phantasmal pulchritude, can appear but vapid and void by comparison with the stupefying facts of entomology. But there is something spectral, something alarming, in the very beauty of insects....
IV
Whether gaki do or do not exist, there is at least some shadowing of truth in the Eastern belief that the dead become insects. Undoubtedly our human dust must help, over and over again for millions of ages, to build up numberless weird shapes of life. But as to that question of my revery under the pine trees,—whether present acts and thoughts can have anything to do with the future distribution and requickening of that dust,—whether human conduct can of itself predetermine the shapes into which human atoms will be recast,—no reply is possible. I doubt—but I do not know. Neither does anybody else.
Supposing, however, that the order of the universe were really as Buddhists believe, and that I knew myself foredoomed, by reason of stupidities in this existence, to live hereafter the life of an insect, I am not sure that the prospect would frighten me. There are insects of which it is difficult to think with equanimity; but the state of an independent, highly organized, respectable insect could not be so very bad. I should even look forward, with some pleasurable curiosity, to any chance of viewing the world through the marvellous compound eyes of a beetle, an ephemera, or a dragon-fly. As an ephemera, indeed, I might enjoy the possession of three different kinds of eyes, and the power to see colours now totally unimaginable. Estimated in degrees of human time, my life would be short,—a single summer day would include the best part of it; but to ephemeral consciousness a few minutes would appear a season; and my one day of winged existence—barring possible mishaps—would be one unwearied joy of dancing in golden air. And I could feel in my winged state neither hunger nor thirst,—having no real mouth or stomach: I should be, in very truth, a Wind-eater.... Nor should I fear to enter upon the much less ethereal condition of a dragon-fly. I should then have to bear carnivorous hunger, and to hunt a great deal; but even dragon-flies, after the fierce joy of the chase, can indulge themselves in solitary meditation. Besides, what wings would then be mine!—and what eyes!... I could pleasurably anticipate even the certainty of becoming an Amembō,4 and so being able to run and to slide upon water—though children might catch me, and bite off my long fine legs. But I think that I should better enjoy the existence of a sémi,—a large and lazy cicada, basking on wind-rocked trees, sipping only dew, and singing from dawn till dusk.
Of course there would be perils to encounter,—danger from hawks and crows and sparrows,—danger from insects of prey—danger from bamboos tipped with birdlime by naughty little boys. But in every condition of life there must be risks; and in spite of the risks, I imagine that Anacreon uttered little more than the truth, in his praise of the cicada: “O thou earth-horn,—song-loving,—free from pain>—having flesh without blood,—thou art nearly equal to the Gods!”... In fact I have not been able to convince myself that it is really an inestimable privilege to be reborn a human being. And if the thinking of this thought, and the act of writing it down, must inevitably affect my next rebirth, then let me hope that the state to which I am destined will not be worse than that of a cicada or of a dragon-fly;—climbing the cryptomerias to clash my tiny cymbals in the sun,—or haunting, with soundless flicker of amethyst and gold, some holy silence of lotos-pools.
Notes
1 The word gaki is the Japanese Buddhist rendering of the Sanscrit term “preta,” signifying a spirit in that circle or state of torment called the World of Hungry Ghosts.
2 Abridged from the Shōbō-nen-jō-Kyō. A full translation of the extraordinary chapter relating to the gaki would try the reader’s nerves rather severely.
3 The following story of a tree-spirit is typical:—In the garden of a Samurai named Satsuma Shichizaëmon, who lived in the village of Echigawa in the province of Ōmi, there was a very old énoki. (The énoki, or “Celtis chinensis,” is commonly thought to be a goblin-tree.) From ancient times the ancestors of the family had been careful never to cut a branch of this tree or to remove any of its leaves. But Shichizaëmon, who was very self-willed, one day announced that he intended to have the tree cut down. During the following night a monstrous being appeared to the mother of Shichizaëmon, in a dream, and told her that if the inoki were cut down, every member of the household should die. But when this warning was communicated to Shichizaëmon, he only laughed; and he then sent a man to cut down the tree. No sooner had it been cut down than Shichizaëmon became violently insane. For several days he remained furiously mad, crying out at intervals, “The tree! the tree! the tree!” He said that the tree put out its branches, like hands, to tear him. In this condition he died. Soon afterward his wife went mad, crying out that the tree was killing her; and she died screaming with fear. One after another, all the people in that house, not excepting the servants, went mad and died. The dwelling long remained unoccupied thereafter, no one daring even to enter the garden. At last it was remembered that before these things happened a daughter of the Satsuma family had become a Buddhist nun, and that she was still living, under the name of Jikun, in a temple at Yamashirō. This nun was sent for; and by request of the villagers she took up her residence in the house, where she continued to live until the time of her death,—daily reciting a special service on behalf of the spirit that had dwelt in the tree. From the time that she began to live in the house the tree-spirit ceased to give trouble. This story is related on the authority of the priest Shungyō, who said that he had heard it from the lips of the nun herself.
4 A water-insect, much resembling what we call a “skater.” In some parts of the country it is said that the boy who wants to become a good swimmer must eat the legs of an Amembō.