Baital Pachisi
Encyclopedia
IAST
The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration is a transliteration scheme that allows a lossless romanization of Indic scripts as employed by the Sanskrit language.-Popularity:...
: , "Twenty five tales of Baital"), is a collection of tales and legend
Legend
A legend is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude...
s within a frame story
Frame story
A frame story is a literary technique that sometimes serves as a companion piece to a story within a story, whereby an introductory or main narrative is presented, at least in part, for the purpose of setting the stage either for a more emphasized second narrative or for a set of shorter stories...
, from India
History of India
The history of India begins with evidence of human activity of Homo sapiens as long as 75,000 years ago, or with earlier hominids including Homo erectus from about 500,000 years ago. The Indus Valley Civilization, which spread and flourished in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent from...
. It was originally written in Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
.
One of its oldest recension
Recension
Recension is the practice of editing or revising a text based on critical analysis. When referring to manuscripts, this may be a revision by another author...
s is found incorporated in the Kathā-Sarit-Sāgara
Kathāsaritsāgara
Kathasaritsagara is a famous 11th-century collection of Indian legends, fairy tales and folk tales as retold by a Saivite Brahmin named Somadeva....
("Ocean of the Streams of Story"), a work in Sanskrit compiled in the 11th century by Somadeva, but thought to have been based on yet older materials. This recension comprises in fact twenty four tales, the frame narrative itself being the twenty fifth. The two other major recensions in Sanskrit are those by Shivadasa and Jambhaladatta.
According to Isabel Burton
Isabel Burton
Isabel Burton was the wife and partner of explorer, adventurer, and writer Sir Richard Francis Burton....
, the Baital Pachisi "is the germ which culminated in the Arabian Nights
The Book of One Thousand and One Nights
One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian stories and folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age...
, and which inspired the Golden Ass of Apuleius
Apuleius
Apuleius was a Latin prose writer. He was a Berber, from Madaurus . He studied Platonist philosophy in Athens; travelled to Italy, Asia Minor and Egypt; and was an initiate in several cults or mysteries. The most famous incident in his life was when he was accused of using magic to gain the...
, Boccacio's Decamerone
The Decameron
The Decameron, also called Prince Galehaut is a 14th-century medieval allegory by Giovanni Boccaccio, told as a frame story encompassing 100 tales by ten young people....
, the Pentamerone
Pentamerone
The Pentamerone is a seventeenth-century fairy tale collection by Italian poet and courtier Giambattista Basile.-Background:...
, and all that class of facetious fictitious literature". (In fact, Apuleius' Golden Ass dates to the 2nd Century CE.)
Burton attributes the stories to 8th-century Sanskrit sage Bhavabhuti
Bhavabhuti
Bhavabhuti was an 8th century scholar of India noted for his plays and poetry, written in Sanskrit. His plays are considered equivalent to the works of Kalidasa...
, but this is probably a mistake. The story appears in the ninth section of the twelfth book of the Kathā-sarit-sāgara.
Plot
The legendary King Vikram, identified as VikramādityaVikramaditya
Vikramaditya was a legendary emperor of Ujjain, India, famed for his wisdom, valour and magnanimity. The title "Vikramaditya" was later assumed by many other kings in Indian history, notably the Gupta King Chandragupta II and Samrat Hem Chandra Vikramaditya .The name King Vikramaditya is a...
(c. 1st century BC), promises a vamachari (a tantric
Tantra
Tantra , anglicised tantricism or tantrism or tantram, is the name scholars give to an inter-religious spiritual movement that arose in medieval India, expressed in scriptures ....
sorcerer) that he will capture a vetala
Vetala
A vetala is a ghost-like being from Hindu mythology. The vetala are defined as spirits inhabiting corpses and charnel grounds...
(or Baital), a vampire spirit who hangs from a tree and inhabits and animates dead bodies.
King Vikram faces many difficulties in bringing the vetala to the tantric. Each time Vikram tries to capture the vetala, it tells a story that ends with a riddle. If Vikram cannot answer the question correctly, the vampire consents to remain in captivity. If the king answers the question correctly, the vampire would escape and return to his tree. In some variations, the king is required to speak if he knows the answer, else his head will burst. In other versions, the king is unable to hold his tongue if he knows the answer, due to his ego. Regardless of the reason, he knows the answer to every question; therefore the cycle of catching and releasing the vampire continues twenty-four times.
On the twenty-fifth attempt, the vetala tells the story of a father and a son in the after-math of a devastating war. They find the queen and the princess alive in the chaos, and decide to take them home. In due time, the son marries the queen and the father marries the princess. Eventually, the son and the queen have a son, and the father and the princess have a daughter. The vetala asks what the relation between the two newborn children is. The question stumps Vikram. Satisfied, the vetala allows himself to be taken to the tantric.
The vetala reveals the sorcerer's plan to sacrifice Vikram, beheading him as he bowed in front of the goddess. The Sorcerer could then gain control over the vetala. The vampire suggests that the king asks the tantric how to perform his obeisance, then take advantage of that moment to behead the sorcerer himself. Vikramāditya
Vikramaditya
Vikramaditya was a legendary emperor of Ujjain, India, famed for his wisdom, valour and magnanimity. The title "Vikramaditya" was later assumed by many other kings in Indian history, notably the Gupta King Chandragupta II and Samrat Hem Chandra Vikramaditya .The name King Vikramaditya is a...
does exactly as told by vetala and he is blessed by Lord Indra
Indra
' or is the King of the demi-gods or Devas and Lord of Heaven or Svargaloka in Hindu mythology. He is also the God of War, Storms, and Rainfall.Indra is one of the chief deities in the Rigveda...
. The vetala offers the king a boon, whereupon Vikram requests that the tantric's life be restored and that the vetala would come to the king's aid when needed.
Variation
A variation of this story replaces the vetal with a minor celestial who, in exchange for his own life, reveals the plot by two tradesmen (replacing the sorcerer) to assassinate Vikram and advises Vikram to trick them into positions of vulnerability as described above. Having killed them, Vikram is offered a reward by the goddess, who grants him two spirits loyal to Her as his servants.Translations
The famous reworking of this cycle into English by Sir Richard Burton, titled Vikram and The Vampire, is only loosely based on the Indian Vetala Panchvimshati, and owes much to Burton's own invention (cf. Penzer VI 1924: 227). It includes 11 stories instead of the original 25.A more faithful translation was by Arthur W. Ryder
Arthur W. Ryder
Arthur William Ryder was a professor of Sanskrit at the University of California, Berkeley. He is best known for translating a number of Sanskrit works into English, including the Panchatantra and the Bhagavad Gita. In the words of G. R. Noyes,-Life:Ryder was born on March 8, 1877 at Oberlin, Ohio...
as Twenty-Two Goblins, which includes 22 of the 25 stories.
There is a modern translation of the The Twenty Fifth tale of the Vetala.
The story is the namesake of German mythologist Heinrich Zimmer
Heinrich Zimmer
Heinrich Robert Zimmer was an Indologist and historian of South Asian art, most known for his works, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization and Philosophies of India. He was the most important German scholar in Indian Philology after Max Müller...
's book The King and the Corpse: Tales of the Soul's Conquest of Evil.
Other media
The story made a popular serial in year 1988 by name Vikram aur BetaalVikram Aur Betaal
Vikram Aur Betaal was a children's television programme aired on DD National. The series contained stories from Indian mythology that aim at teaching kids lessons of life while entertaining them...
starring Arun Govil
Arun Govil
Arun Govil is an award-winning Indian actor, producer and director. He has acted in various Hindi, Bhojpuri, Oriya and Telugu movies. He is best known for playing Rama in Ramanand Sagar's hit television series Ramayan .-Personal life:Arun Govil was born in Ramnagar near Meerut, Uttar Pradesh...
as Vikram and SajjanKumar as the Vetala by Sagar Films (Pvt. Ltd.)
Sagar Films (Pvt. Ltd.)
Sagar Films, also known as Sagar Arts, is a film and television production company Mumbai, India. It was founded by Ramanand Sagar and is a part of the Sagar Group of companies owned by the Sagar family.- Movies produced :* Salma...
. It was aired on Doordarshan
DoorDarshan
Doordarshan is an Indian public service broadcaster, a division of Prasar Bharati. It is one of the largest broadcasting organizations in India in terms of the infrastructure of studios and transmitters. Recently, it has also started Digital Terrestrial Transmitters. On September 15, 2009,...
the public television broadcaster of India. Also, a remake of the same serial was made with the name 'Kahaniyaan Vikram aur Betaal Ki' is currently running on Indian Satellite channel 'Colors', being made by the new generation of Sagar Films (Pvt. Ltd.)
Sagar Films (Pvt. Ltd.)
Sagar Films, also known as Sagar Arts, is a film and television production company Mumbai, India. It was founded by Ramanand Sagar and is a part of the Sagar Group of companies owned by the Sagar family.- Movies produced :* Salma...
. Another vampire called Vetaal and his spellbook Paddu were found by a boy called Vikram "Vicky" Sharma in the TV series Vicky & Vetaal
Vicky & Vetaal
Vicky and Vetaal is a children's comedy series produced by and aired on Disney Channel India. It was launched on October 7, 2006 as the first major original production of the network, and Disney's first locally produced live action Hindi language series...
.
A popular children's periodical, Chandamama, features a serial story known as New Tales of Vikram and Betal for many years. As the title suggests, keeping the original premise of the story intact, new stories are told by Betal to King Vikram.
Further reading
- Baital Pachisi: Twenty Five Ghost Stories, Captain W. Hollings, Varanasi: Pilgrims PublishingPilgrims PublishingPilgrims Book House - is a publishing company founded in Kathmandu, Nepal in 1991. It was transformation from the Book Faith India . Now headquartered in Varanasi.Pilgrims Book House have books in English, Polish, French, Spanish and Hindi languages...
, 2006, ISBN 8177691163, ISBN 9788177691160 - Penzer, N. M. (ed.). 1924. The Ocean of Story, being C. H. Tawney's Translation of Somadeva's Katha Sarit Sagara (or Ocean of Streams of Story) I-X. London.
- Ritschl, E., & Schetelich, M. (eds.). 1989. Die fünfundzwanzig Erzählungen des Totendämons. Leipzig. [translation of the Shivadasa recension]
External links
- Vikram and The Vampire translated by Sir Richard Francis Burton (also available at World Wide School Library): Translation by Arthur W. RyderArthur W. RyderArthur William Ryder was a professor of Sanskrit at the University of California, Berkeley. He is best known for translating a number of Sanskrit works into English, including the Panchatantra and the Bhagavad Gita. In the words of G. R. Noyes,-Life:Ryder was born on March 8, 1877 at Oberlin, Ohio...
- Original Sanskrit text in Harvard-KyotoHarvard-KyotoThe Harvard-Kyoto Convention is a system for transliterating in ASCII the Sanskrit language and other languages that use the Devanāgarī script...
transliteration - Sanskrit text in transliteration at GRETILGRETILThe Göttingen Register of Electronic Texts in Indian Languages is a comprehensive repository of e-texts in Sanskrit and other Indian languages.It contains several texts related to Indology, such as philosophical texts...