The story of the Yakshi that dwells in the palm tree

We have already talked about the Yaksha who dwells at the thousand petalled lotus , called the Sahasraaram. It might appear surprising strange, when most of us say that the Yakshi dwells in the palm tree. How come that the Keralalites believed the palm tree to be the dwelling place of the Yakshi. To be on the palm tree , these Yakshis should have been either drunkards or toddy-tappers, which they were definitely not so. Then what inspired the Keralites to transfer the residence of this Yakshi to the palm tree? Here is the answer. ‘Yakshan’ means Paramaatman –God supreme. Just because God does the stupendous job of creation called Yajna, he gets the name Yaksham. To be more clear, one who does ‘yajna’ is called a ‘yaksham’. The female of a ‘yaksham’ is ‘yakshi’. In other words, the place where a yajna is performed is known as the ‘yakshi’. Perhaps, it was when the idea of ‘yajna’ eventually deteriorated to the level of an act ,of ‘sucking out human blood after making one do the maximum work’, that the heinous word ‘yakshi’ took the place of the word ‘yajna’. Later the planting of palm trees , the leaves of which were used for writing, became a regular feature. Hence, when the place where ‘yajna’ was performed became ‘yakshi’ and in that ‘yakshi’ palm trees thrived, eventually this transformation took place. That is the horror story of the blood sucking ‘yakshi’ which dwells in the palm tree. The story of ‘Vettakkorumakan’ is another story much more interesting than this.