Yakshi and Kalliyankattu Neeli
- Origin
- Yakshis belong to Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions, and Kerala's Neeli is kept in ballads and temple stories. The sources are Wikipedia, an Onmanorama feature on the temple legend and an essay in The South First. None is a text from the traditions.
- How we treat it
- The label says these beings are held in living religious traditions and folk ballads. It is not a verdict on whether they exist. The film versions of Neeli are modern retellings.
- Routes out
- The temple legend comes first, then the essay on its retellings, then the general encyclopaedia entry.
Yakshis are female spirits of nature in Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions. In Kerala the best known is Kalliyankattu Neeli, who in one telling found refuge in a temple.
Wikipedia describes yakshinis, also called yakshis, as female spirits of nature in Hindu, Buddhist and Jain mythologies. With the male yakshas they are among the divine or semi-divine beings linked to India's sacred groves. They appear in the legends of tribes in north-eastern India, in ancient Kerala legends and in the folktales of Kashmiris, and the sacred texts of Sikhism mention yakshas too. They are a different class from devas, asuras, gandharvas and apsaras.
Onmanorama gives the Kerala legend of Neeli, a fierce and clever yakshi who met Kadamattathu Kathanar, a priest known in folklore for his magic. He captured her and made her serve in his house. She escaped to Panayannarkavu and called on the goddess for help. Bhagavathy took pity and let her stay in the temple grounds for good, so that she belonged to the divine household and her wandering ended.
An essay in The South First traces Neeli's path from a yakshi who thirsted for blood on the village edge into a figure of female agency in recent cinema. It says her story, which comes out of sung ballads and ritual performance, has for centuries been a place where people acted out and held in check their fears over gender, betrayal and justice.
"Yakshinis or Yakshis (Sanskrit: यक्षिणी, IAST: Yakṣiṇī or Yakṣī, IPA: [jɐkʂiɳiː, jɐkʂiː]; Prakrit: Yakkhiṇī or Yakkhī, IPA: [jɐkːʰiɳiː, jɐkːʰiː]) are a class of female nature spirits in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain religious mythologies. Yakshinis and their male counterparts, the Yakshas, are among the many divine or semi-divine beings traditionally associated with the sacred groves of India. Yakshis appear in the traditional legends of Northeastern Indian tribes, ancient legends of Kerala, and in the folktales of Kashmiris. Sikhism also mentions yakshas in its sacred texts. Yakshinis are different from Devas, Asuras, Gandharvas and Apsaras.[3]"
- Neeli, from ballads to posthuman Lokah, The South First
- Kalliyankattu Neeli and the temples, Onmanorama (2025)