Dreams
have been every child’s own world. I have yet to come across a child, who
hasn’t dreamt about something and is simply too eager to talk about it. As a
child, I was no different; rather the recollection of my dreams were so vivid,
that many a times my mother thought I was weaving yarns! But childhood sleep
was not just about dreams and fantasies, there were nightmares too. While I
didn’t wake up with a jolt as we see them in the movies, I did wake up a lot
disturbed. Tried many means of avoiding them, some worked, if there were none
that night, while many didn’t. If only I had known about Baku, way back then.
Baku,
also known as the dream-eater, is a mythological creature from the Chinese and
Japanese folklore which eats up nightmares! It has an interesting description,
more like a chimera (a Greek hybrid mythological creature), a beast made out of
different parts of animals. Baku has been depicted as an animal which has body
of a bear, the nose and tusks of an elephant, feet like a tiger, tail of an ox
and the eyes of a rhinoceros. It is said that Baku was created with the
left-over pieces of animals after God had finished creating the other animals.
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| Baku (Pic courtesy - www.hyakumonogatari.com) |
Baku
has undergone change over time. Ancient Chinese legends spoke about hunting
Baku’s and hanging their skins on the walls of the bedroom to avoid nightmares.
But now, hanging pictures of Baku on the wall was good enough to ward off the
nightmares. When a Chinese or a Japanese child wakes up in the middle of the
night due to a nightmare, the child says “Baku, come and eat my dream” three
times and goes back to sleep. Baku is then supposed to eat the nightmares and
relieve the child of the trauma. However, one should be cautious enough of the
severity of the nightmare before calling. If the nightmare is not very severe,
then the Baku is not left with much to eat. Under such circumstances, it might
end up feeding on to the dreams, hopes and desires of the child, which could be
counter-productive. Thus it is important to understand when to call Baku. It
acts as a deterrent to nightmares if summoned before falling asleep and thus it
is quite common to find, Baku talisman at the bedsides of Japanese children.
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| Baku at the Konnoh Hachimangu Shrine, Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan |
Though
a number of colourful depictions of Baku in its original descriptions are
found, in Japan it is also depicted like a tapir (a pig like animal with a long
snout), since the kanji (Japanese form of writing) for Baku is same as that of
the tapir. According to a modern tradition, children sleep with small Baku
amulets under their pillows between Jan 1st and 2nd, and
if they have good dreams, then its an indication of a good year ahead! To avoid
a nightmare, just invoke the Baku before going to sleep and you will be
relieved of a bad year!
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| Bakumon |
In
modern times, Baku in the form of a tapir has found a representation in well-known
series like the Pokemon as the character Bakumon, who can hurl ‘undigested
nightmares’ at the opponent in the terror of nightmares!
So
here’s wishing all of you a very happy new year and a year where your dreams
are fulfilled and nightmares are eaten away by Baku!!
