King Vikram and the Vampire
A collection of Hindu folktales about the adventures of a great raja, King Vikram, and a BAITAL, or VAMPIRE. The tales first appeared in Sanskrit as the Baital-Pachisi (Twenty-five Tales of a Baital); they established the literary foundations of the Arabian Nights tales, inspired Apuleius’s Golden Ass, and influenced the development of the chivalric tale in medieval Europe.

King Vikram and the Vampire was translated into various languages. It was translated into English by Sir Richard F. Burton and was published in 1870. Burton also translated the 1001 Arabian Nights, the Kama Sutra, and other texts.

The tales are set “some nineteen centuries ago.” King Vikram (short for Vikramaditya) is a semi-historical figure, a King Arthur of the East. He leaves his throne for a time and wanders with his son, Sharma Dhwaj, in search of truth. During his adventures, a giant warns him that a certain jogi(yogi) is plotting to kill the raja. The jogi has murdered the son of an oilman, whose body he has hung upside down in a siras-tree (mimosa tree). He has also murdered his own son.

Vikram returns to his throne and resumes his duties as judge, dispensing justice. He punishes his enemies. One day a wealthy young merchant begins paying him daily calls, bringing him gifts of precious jewels. The king asks him what he desires. The young man says he is not a merchant, but is really a devotee and jogi,and he lives down by the river Godavari in asmashana,a CEMETERY where bodies are burned. It is his wish that the raja and his son come to him one day and do his bidding. The raja agrees, though he dislikes the idea of going to the cemetery.

When Vikram and his son arrived at the ill-omened spot, they find a horrible scene:

There was an outer circle of hideous bestial forms; tigers were roaring, and elephants were trumpeting; wolves, whose foul hairy coats blazed with sparks of bluish phosphoric light, were devouring the remnants of human bodies; foxes, jackals, and hyenas were disputing over their prey; while bears were chewing on the livers of children. The space within was peopled with a multitude of fiends. There were the subtle bodies of men that had escaped their grosser frames prowling about the charnel ground, where their corpses had been reduced to ashes, or hovering in the air, waiting till the new bodies which they were to animate were made ready for their reception. The spirits of those that had been foully slain wandered about with gashed limbs; and skeletons, whose moldy bones were held together by bits of blackened sinew, followed them as the murderer does his victim. Malignant witches with shriveled skins, horrid eyes and distorted forms, crawled and crouched over the earth; while specters and goblins now stood motionless, and tall as lofty palm trees; then, as if in fits, leaped, danced and tumbled before their evocator. The air was filled with shrill and strident cries, with the fitful moaning of the storm-wind, with the hoarse gurgling of the swollen river, from whose banks the earth-slip thundered in its fall.

In the midst of this sits the jogi, now ugly and disheveled, his face painted with ASHES from cremated
CORPSES. He plays upon a human skull with two bones, making a weird drumming. The jogi tells him that about four miles away there is another cemetery where bodies are burned. A body is hanging on a mimosa tree there. The jogi’s request is that Vikram and his son fetch the body back to the jogi.

The task proves to be more difficult than the raja and his son anticipated. They find the body inhabited and transformed by an ugly baital. It takes many blows to bring it down from its tree and subdue it. It wails, shrieks, gnashes its teeth, and laughs and cackles. Vikram realizes the baital has taken over the corpse of the oilman’s son.

The baital finally surrenders of his own accord. The baital informs the king that he is “of a loquacious disposition,” and to fill the hour that it will take to travel to the jogi, he will entertain the king with “sprightly tales and profitable reflections.” He will ask the king questions at the end of every tale. The baitalstrikes an agreement that if the king gives false, ignorant, or erroneous answers to the questions, the baital will go free and will be able to return to his beloved tree. But if the king remains silent, has no answer, or humbly admits his ignorance, the baital will go willingly to the jogi.

In his translation, Burton included 11 of what he judged to be the best of the baital’s tales. They deal with Indian customs, manners, and religious, and magical practices. At the end of each tale, the baital poses questions that are like riddles.

At last both Vikram and his son are stumped for answers to the baital’s questions and wisely remain silent. The baital tells him the jogi is plotting against the king to avenge a wrong done to his father by Vikram. The jogi killed the oilman’s son because he threatened to interfere with his plans. The body was hung in the tree as a trap to Vikram. He whispers the jogi’s plans.

Vikram and his son return to the hideous cemetery and deliver the corpse to the jogi, who is quite pleased. The form of the corpse has changed back into the oilman’s son. The jogi requests that Vikram and Dharma Dhwaj pay a devotion to Smashana-Kali, the Kali (eight-armed goddess of destruction) of the cemetery. He leads them to a giant statue of the goddess. His secret plan is to have the statue fall on the king, crushing him. But Vikram outwits him and cuts off his head with a blow of his sword. Dharma Dhwaj pulls his father out of the way just as the giant statue of Kali comes crashing down.

The god Indra appears and grants Vikram a boon. The king asks for his history to become famous throughout the world. Thus, according to tradition, all storytellers invoke Vikram when spinning their tales.

FURTHER READING:

• Burton, Isabel, ed. Captain Sir Richard F. Burton’s King Vikram and The Vampire. Rochester, Vt.: Park Street Press, 1992.