Sanni Yakuma

[1][2] The ritual calls the demons who are thought to affect the patient, who are then told not to trouble humans and banished.

However, she gave birth when she was executed and her child became the Kola Sanniya, who grew up "feeding on his mother's corpse".

[6] He created eighteen lumps of poison and charmed them, thereby turning them into demons who assisted him in his destruction of the city.

[8] Although it is unclear when the ritual began, it has been performed in the southern and western parts of the country since ancient times.

[16] The dancers are dressed in colourful attire and masks, and perform swift and complex dance steps and spins accompanied by rhythmical drum beats.

Drummer: Aah – you are only a mad demon – beneath contempt.Ata Paliya is the name given to the eight dances in the first stage of the ritual.

The demons who first appear frightening when they enter the stage in frenzied dances are then shown as comic figures through enactments, with them being humiliated and forced to do various things.

In the end, he is made to obtain the permission of the Buddha and accept offerings from humans, and agrees to stop troubling them.

[13] However, the eighteen most commons masks (and names of the demons) are as follows:[22] The Sanni Yakuma is still performed today, particularly along the south coast, though more often as a cultural spectacle than an exorcism ritual.