The World of Women Evil Spirits: The Chudiyal

The world of the supernatural is an exciting field. Many believe in I and many do not and think that all tales about supernatural beings and evil spirits is a hallucination or a figment of a man’s imagination. However sometimes truth is stranger than fiction and it’s my personal view that evil spirits do exist and sometimes they take the human form to torment anyone who crosses their path. Some of these spirits actually relish contact with a human being and there are many such tales from the villages of India. One belief that is very popular concerns the female evil spirit often referred to as ‘Chudiyal’. A Chudiyal is a dead woman who takes human form time and gain to wreak vengeance on man. Chudiuyal’s are very popular in mythology as well. Generally they are those women who have done some evil deeds like killing young children and have been denied entry into the world of spirits. They are thus condemned to roam this earth and wait the day when God may all them entry into the spirit world.

Indian villages are full of tales of the female evil spirit and in my own village there are at least 2 men who swear on oath that they have been accosted by Chudiuyal’s. One of the men recounted to me that once he was proceeding along a lonely village path in the hills and saw a most beautiful woman standing and weeping by the side of the path. He stopped and asked her what the matter was. The woman replied that she was alone and had been thrown out her home by her parents who were poor and could not afford her dowry. The man took pity on the woman and told her not to worry and come with him. In fact he was enthralled by her beauty and sexiness. In some villages in Himachal it’s difficult to get a bride and many men buy brides from mountainous villages. I will have to write about this custom in a later post. The man was 40 years old and still a bachelor and a thought crossed his mind that this lovely woman could be his wife as well. Sex was foremost in his thoughts and I can’t blame him for it. He took the girl home and told villagers that he had brought a wife from the mountains. It was a normal practice and other villagers only wished him luck.

Strange thing happened on the first night. The man undressed the woman and in the light of the earthen lamp made ferocious love to the woman. It thrilled him that she was a virgin. After the act both lay side by side and the man asked his new wife to smother the flame of the earthen lamp some distance away. The lady laughed and in a moment she extended her leg till it grew long and with her foot smothered the flame of the diva or earthen lamp. Seeing this strange happening the man realized that the lady was a Chudiyal and immediately began to recite the Jap, the holy prayer of Nanak. He got up and ran out of the house shouting chudiyal had entered his house. All villager gathered and a ‘chela’ soothsayer came forward. He told the man not to enter his house as he went inside to confront the evil spirit. By recitation of mantras and rituals he was able to banish the woman who soon appeared out of the house and grew to height of 20 feet. It was terrible but luckily the chudiyal went away. Another man claimed that he saw his wife using her leg in place of firewood and realized that she was a chudiyal. One cannot say these story are true or not , but I am inclined to believe them. All I can add is that this is one frontier that is still unexplored.