I’m starting to wonder how much of the Ancient Indian Cosmology comes from the Aryan invaders. One concept that seems to have not survived/assimilated is the idea of a personal guardian spirit, the “fravashi”, which does survive as the “holy guardian angel” in some strands of Semitic religions in the Near East and later through the Catholic Church in Europe. However, the very name “deva” seems quite obviously derived from the Avestan “daeva”, similarly “asura” from “ahura”. Although, their moral valence is flipped (ahuras were the good guys and daevas bad in Zoroastrianism, devas good guys and asuras bad in Indian cosmology). This isn’t unheard of in the history of religions, many of the named demons of Christianity are actually the old pagan gods reframed as evil. In fact, the word demon itself is probably an example of a negative reframing, demonization, of the Hellenistic concept of daimon (spirit). If anyone knows of any scholarly study tracing the development of the Indic pantheon, I would be interested.
I’m also wondering how much of magical thinking survives to modern Buddhism. The Buddha condemns “lower” forms of magick such as astrology, divination, etc., yet at the same time praises (from a certain perpective, “higher” forms of) miracles and visions. In present day Thailand, there are many Buddhist-magical syncretic practices, the making of talismans, divination (lottery especially), and sak yant (image magick in the form of enchanted tattoos). Are these holdovers from the Saivite Khmer Kingdom which encompassed much of present-day Thailand? Is it from the ru-sees (sorry, no proper romanization of Thai script) ( ṛṣi/rishi in the Indic form)? Again, if anyone knows of any scholarly work…
