Vikram and the Vampire

‘“For a man who does not travel about there is no felicity, and a good man who stays at home is a bad man. Indra is the friend of him who travels. Travel!

‘“A traveller’s legs are like blossoming branches, and he himself grows and gathers the fruit. All his wrongs vanish, destroyed by his exertion on the roadside. Travel!

‘“The fortune of a man who sits, sits also; it rises when he rises; it sleeps when he sleeps; it moves well when he moves. Travel!

‘“A man who sleeps is like the Iron Age. A man who awakes is like the Bronze Age. A man who rises up is like the Silver Age. A man who travels is like the Golden Age. Travel!

‘“A traveller finds honey; a traveller finds sweet figs. Look at the happiness of the sun, who travelling never tires. Travel!”’

Before parting they divided the relics of the beloved one, and then they went their way.

Tribikram, having separated and tied up the burnt bones, became one of the Vaisheshikas, in those days a powerful sect. He solemnly forswore the eight great crimes, namely: feeding at night; slaying any animal; eating the fruit of trees that give milk, or pumpkins or young bamboos; tasting honey or flesh; plundering the wealth of others; taking by force a married woman; eating flowers, butter, or cheese; and worshipping the gods of other religions. He learned that the highest act of virtue is to abstain from doing injury to sentient creatures; that crime does not justify the destruction of life; and that kings, as the administrators of criminal justice, are the greatest of sinners. He professed the five vows of total abstinence from falsehood, eating flesh or fish, theft, drinking spirits, and marriage. He bound himself to possess nothing beyond a white loin-cloth, a towel to wipe the mouth, a beggar’s dish, and a brush of woollen threads to sweep the ground for fear of treading on insects. And he was ordered to fear secular affairs; the miseries of a future state; the receiving from others more than the food of a day at once; all accidents; provisions, if connected with the destruction of animal life; death and disgrace; also to please all, and to obtain compassion from all.

He attempted to banish his love. He said to himself, ‘Surely it was owing only to my pride and selfishness that I ever looked upon a woman as capable of affording happiness; and I thought, “Ah! ah! thine eyes roll about like the tail of the water-wagtail, thy lips resemble the ripe fruit, thy bosom is like the lotus buds, thy form is resplendent as gold melted in a crucible, the moon wanes through desire to imitate the shadow of thy face, thou resemblest the pleasure-house of Cupid; the happiness of all time is concentrated in thee; a touch from thee would surely give life to a dead image; at thy approach a living admirer would be changed by joy into a lifeless stone; obtaining thee I can face all the horrors of war; and were I pierced by showers of arrows, one glance of thee would heal all my wounds.”

‘My mind is now averted from the world. Seeing her I say, “Is this the form by which men are bewitched? This is a basket covered with skin; it contains bones, flesh, blood, and impurities. The stupid creature who is captivated by this – is there a cannibal feeding in Currim a greater cannibal than he? These persons call a thing made up of impure matter a face, and drink its charms as a drunkard swallows the inebriating liquor from his cup. The blind, infatuated beings! Why should I be pleased or displeased with this body, composed of flesh and blood? It is my duty to seek Him who is the Lord of this body, and to disregard everything which gives rise either to pleasure or to pain.’

Baman, the second suitor, tied up a bundle of his beloved one’s ashes, and followed – somewhat prematurely – the precepts of the great lawgiver Manu. ‘When the father of a family perceives his muscles becoming flaccid, and his hair grey, and sees the child of his child, let him then take refuge in a forest. Let him take up his consecrated fire and all his domestic implements for making oblations to it, and, departing from the town to the lonely wood, let him dwell in it with complete power over his organs of sense and of action. With many sorts of pure food, such as holy sages used to eat, with green herbs, roots, and fruit, let him perform the five great sacraments, introducing them with due ceremonies. Let him wear a black antelope-hide, or a vesture of bark; let him bathe evening and morning; let him suffer the hair of his head, his beard and his nails to grow continually. Let him slide backwards and forwards on the ground; or let him stand a whole day on tiptoe; or let him continue in motion, rising and sitting alternately; but at sunrise, at noon, and at sunset, let him go to the waters and bathe. In the hot season let him sit exposed to five fires, four blazing around him, with the sun above; in the rains, let him stand uncovered, without even a mantle, where the clouds pour the heaviest showers; in the cold season let him wear damp clothes, and let him increase by degrees the austerity of his devotions. Then, having reposited his holy fires, as the law directs, in his mind, let him live without external fire, without a mansion, wholly silent, feeding on roots and fruit.’

Meanwhile Madhusadan the third, having taken a wallet and neckband, became a Jogi, and began to wander far and wide, living on nothing but chaff, and practising his devotions. In order to see Bramha he attended to the following duties: 1. Hearing; 2. Meditation; 3. Fixing the Mind; 4. Absorbing the Mind. He combated the three evils, restlessness, injuriousness, voluptuousness, by settling the Deity in his spirit, by subjecting his senses, and by destroying desire. Thus he would do away with the illusion (Maya) which conceals all true knowledge. He repeated the name of the Deity till it appeared to him in the form of a Dry Light or glory. Though connected with the affairs of life, that is, with affairs belonging to a body containing blood, bones, and impurities; to organs which are blind, palsied, and full of weakness and error; to a mind filled with thirst, hunger, sorrow, infatuation; to confirmed habits, and to the fruits of former births: still he strove not to view these things as realities. He made a companion of a dog, honouring it with his own food, so as the better to think on spirit. He practised all the five operations connected with the vital air, or air collected in the body. He attended much to Pranayama, or the gradual suppression of breathing, and he secured fixedness of mind as follows. By placing his sight and thoughts on the tip of his nose he perceived smell; on the tip of his tongue he realised taste, on the root of his tongue he knew sound, and so forth. He practised the eighty-four Asana or postures, raising his hand to the wonders of the heavens, till he felt no longer the inconveniences of heat or cold, hunger or thirst. He particularly preferred the Padma or lotus-posture which consists of bringing the feet to the sides, holding the right in the left hand and the left in the right. In the work of suppressing his breath he permitted its respiration to reach at furthest twelve fingers’ breadth, and gradually diminished the distance from his nostrils till he could confine it to the length of twelve fingers from his nose, and even after restraining it for some time he would draw it from no greater distance than from his heart. As respects time, he began by retaining inspiration for twenty-six seconds, and he enlarged this period gradually till he became perfect. He sat cross-legged, closing with his fingers all the avenues of inspiration, and he practised Prityahara, or the power of restraining the members of the body and mind, with meditation and concentration, to which there are four enemies, viz. a sleepy heart, human passions, a confused mind, and attachment to anything but the one Bramha. He also cultivated Yama, that is, inoffensiveness, truth, honesty, the forsaking of all evil in the world, and the refusal of gifts except for sacrifice, and Nihama, i.e. purity relative to the use of water after defilement, pleasure in everything whether in prosperity or adversity, renouncing food when hungry, and keeping down the body. Thus delivered from these four enemies of the flesh, he resembled the unruffled flame of the lamp, and by Bramhagnana, or meditating on the Deity, placing his mind on the sun, moon, fire, or any other luminous body, or within his heart, or at the bottom of his throat, or in the centre of his skull, he was enabled to ascend from gross images of omnipotence to the works and the divine wisdom of the glorious original.

One day Madhusadan, the Jogi, went to a certain house for food, and the householder having seen him began to say, ‘Be so good as to take your food here this day!’ The visitor sat down, and when the victuals were ready, the host caused his feet and hands to be washed, and leading him to the Chauka, or square place upon which meals are served, seated him and sat by him. And he quoted the scripture: ‘No guest must be dismissed in the evening by a housekeeper: he is sent by the returning sun, and whether he come in fit season or unseasonably, he must not sojourn in the house without entertainment: let me not eat any delicate food, without asking my guest to partake of it: the satisfaction of a guest will assuredly bring the housekeeper wealth, reputation, long life, and a place in heaven.’

The householder’s wife then came to serve up the food, rice and split peas, oil, and spices, all cooked in a new earthen pot with pure firewood. Part of the meal was served and the rest remained to be served, when the woman’s little child began to cry aloud and to catch hold of its mother’s dress. She endeavoured to release herself, but the boy would not let go, and the more she coaxed the more he cried, and was obstinate. On this the mother became angry, took up the boy and threw him upon the fire, which instantly burnt him to ashes.

Madhusadan, the Jogi, seeing this, rose up without eating. The master of the house said to him, ‘Why eatest thou not?’ He replied, ‘I am “Atithi,” that is to say, to be entertained at your house, but how can one eat under the roof of a person who has committed such a Rakshasa-like (devilish) deed? Is it not said, “He who does not govern his passions, lives in vain?” “A foolish king, a person puffed up with riches, and a weak child, desire that which cannot be procured.” Also, “A king destroys his enemies, even when flying; and the touch of an elephant, as well as the breath of a serpent, are fatal; but the wicked destroy even while laughing.”’

Hearing this, the householder smiled; presently he arose and went to another part of the tenement, and brought back with him a book, treating on Sanjivnividya, or the science of restoring the dead to life. This he had taken from its hidden place, two beams almost touching one another with the ends in the opposite wall. The precious volume was in single leaves, some six inches broad by treble that length, and the paper was stained with yellow orpiment and the juice of tamarind seeds to keep away insects.

The householder opened the cloth containing the book, untied the flat boards at the top and bottom, and took out from it a charm. Having repeated this Mantra, with many ceremonies he at once restored the child to life, saying, ‘Of all precious things, knowledge is the most valuable; other riches may be stolen, or diminished by expenditure, but knowledge is immortal, and the greater the expenditure the greater the increase; it can be shared with none, and it defies the power of the thief.’

The Jogi, seeing this marvel, took thought in his heart, ‘If I could obtain that book, I would restore my beloved to life, and give up this course of uncomfortable postures and difficulty of breathing.’ With this resolution he sat down to his food, and remained in the house.

At length night came, and after a time, all having eaten supper, and gone to their sleeping-places, lay down. The Jogi also went to rest in one part of the house, but did not allow sleep to close his eyes. When he thought that a fourth part of the hours of darkness had sped, and that all were deep in slumber, then he got up very quietly, and going into the room of the master of the house, he took down the book from the beam-ends and went his ways.

Madhusadan, the Jogi, went straight to the place where the beautiful Sweet Jasmine had been burned. There he found his two rivals sitting talking together and comparing experiences. They recognised him at once, and cried aloud to him, ‘Brother! thou also hast been wandering over the world; tell us this – hast thou learned anything which can profit us?’ He replied, ‘I have learned the science of restoring the dead to life;’ upon which they both exclaimed, ‘If thou hast really learned such knowledge, restore our beloved to life.’

Madhusadan proceeded to make his incantations, despite terrible sights in the air, the cries of jackals, owls, crows, cats, asses, vultures, dogs, and lizards, and the wrath of innumerable invisible beings, such as messengers of Yama (Pluto), ghosts, devils, demons, imps, fiends, devas, succubi, and others. All the three lovers drawing blood from their own bodies offered it to the goddess Chandi, repeating the following incantation, ‘Hail! supreme delusion! Hail! goddess of the universe! Hail! thou who fulfillest the desires of all. May I presume to offer thee the blood of my body; and wilt thou deign to accept it, and be propitious towards me!’

They then made a burnt-offering of their flesh, and each one prayed, ‘Grant me, O goddess! to see the maiden alive again, in proportion to the fervency with which I present thee with mine own flesh, invoking thee to be propitious to me. Salutation to thee again and again, under the mysterious syllables ang! ang!’

Then they made a heap of the bones and the ashes, which had been carefully kept by Tribikram and Baman. As the Jogi Madhusadan proceeded with his incantation, a white vapour arose from the ground, and, gradually condensing, assumed a perispiritual form – the fluid envelope of the soul. The three spectators felt their blood freeze as the bones and the ashes were gradually absorbed into the before shadowy shape, and they were restored to themselves only when the maiden Madhuvati begged to be taken home to her mother.

Then Kama, God of Love, blinded them, and they began fiercely to quarrel about who should have the beautiful maid. Each wanted to be her sole master. Tribikram declared the bones to be the great fact of the incantation; Baman swore by the ashes; and Madhusadan laughed them both to scorn. No one could decide the dispute; the wisest doctors were all nonplussed; and as for the Raja – well! we do not go for wit or wisdom to kings. I wonder if the great Raja Vikram could decide which person the woman belonged to?

‘To Baman, the man who kept her ashes, fellow!’ exclaimed the hero, not a little offended by the free remarks of the fiend.

‘Yet,’ rejoined the Baital impudently, ‘if Tribikram had not preserved her bones how could she have been restored to life? And if Madhusadan had not learned the science of restoring the dead to life how could she have been revivified? At least, so it seems to me. But perhaps your royal wisdom may explain.’

‘Devil!’ said the king angrily, ‘Tribikram, who preserved her bones, by that act placed himself in the position of her son; therefore he could not marry her. Madhusadan, who, restoring her to life, gave her life, was evidently a father to her; he could not, then, become her husband. Therefore she was the wife of Baman, who had collected her ashes.’

‘I am happy to see, O king,’ exclaimed the Vampire, ‘that, in spite of my presentiments, we are not to part company just yet. These little trips I hold to be, like lovers’ quarrels, the prelude to closer union. With your leave we will still practise a little suspension.’

And so saying, the Baital again ascended the tree, and was suspended there.

‘Would it not be better,’ thought the monarch, after recapturing and shouldering the fugitive, ‘for me to sit down this time and listen to the fellow’s story? Perhaps the double exercise of walking and thinking confuses me.’

With this idea Vikram placed his bundle upon the ground, well tied up with turban and waistband; then he seated himself cross-legged before it, and bade his son do the same.

The Vampire strongly objected to this measure, as it was contrary, he asserted, to the covenant between him and the Raja. Vikram replied by citing the very words of the agreement, proving that there was no allusion to walking or sitting.

Then the Baital became sulky, and swore that he would not utter another word. But he, too, was bound by the chain of destiny. Presently he opened his lips, with the normal prelude that he was about to tell a true tale.

THE VAMPIRE’S SEVENTH STORY.

SHOWING THE EXCEEDING FOLLY OF MANY WISE FOOLS

The Baital resumed.

Of all the learned Brahmans in the learnedest university of Gaur (Bengal) none was so celebrated as Vishnu Swami. He could write verse as well as prose in dead languages, not very correctly, but still, better than all his fellows – which constituted him a distinguished writer. He had history, theosophy, and the four Vedas or Scriptures at his fingers’ ends, he was skilled in the argute science of Nyasa or Disputation, his mind was a mine of Pauranic or cosmogonico-traditional lore, handed down from the ancient fathers to the modern fathers: and he had written bulky commentaries, exhausting all that tongue of man has to say, upon the obscure text of some old philosopher whose works upon ethics, poetry, and rhetoric were supposed by the sages of Gaur to contain the germs of everything knowable. His fame went over all the country; yea, from country to country. He was a sea of excellent qualities, the father and mother of Brahmans, cows, and women, and the horror of loose persons, cut-throats, courtiers, and courtesans. As a benefactor he was equal to Karna, most liberal of heroes. In regard to truth he was equal to the veracious king Yudhishtira.

True, he was sometimes at a loss to spell a common word in his mother tongue, and whilst he knew to a fingerbreadth how many palms and paces the sun, the moon, and all the stars are distant from the earth, he would have been puzzled to tell you where the region called Yavana[119 - The land of Greece.] lies. Whilst he could enumerate, in strict chronological succession, every important event that happened five or six million years before he was born, he was profoundly ignorant of those that occurred in his own day. And once he asked a friend seriously, if a cat let loose in the jungle would not in time become a tiger.

Yet did all the members of alma mater Kasi, Pandits[120 - Savans, professors. So in the old saying, ‘Hanta, Pandit Sansara.’ – Alas! the world is learned! This a little antedates the well-known schoolmaster.] as well as students, look with awe upon Vishnu Swami’s livid cheeks, and lack-lustre eyes, grimed hands and soiled cottons.

Now it so happened that this wise and pious Brahmanic peer had four sons, whom he brought up in the strictest and most serious way. They were taught to repeat their prayers long before they understood a word of them, and when they reached the age of four[121 - Children are commonly sent to school at the age of five. Girls are not taught to read, under the common idea that they will become widows if they do.] they had read a variety of hymns and spiritual songs. Then they were set to learn by heart precepts that inculcate sacred duties, and arguments relating to theology, abstract and concrete.

Their father, who was also their tutor, sedulously cultivated, as all the best works upon education advise, their implicit obedience, humble respect, warm attachment, and the virtues and sentiments generally. He praised them secretly and reprehended them openly, to exercise their humility. He derided their looks, and dressed them coarsely, to preserve them from vanity and conceit. Whenever they anticipated a ‘treat,’ he punctually disappointed them, to teach them self-denial. Often when he had promised them a present, he would revoke, not break his word, in order that discipline might have a name and habitat in his household. And knowing by experience how much stronger than love is fear, he frequently threatened, browbeat, and overawed them with the rod and the tongue, with the terrors of this world, and with the horrors of the next, that they might be kept in the right way by dread of falling into the bottomless pits that bound it on both sides.

At the age of six they were transferred to the Chatushpati,[122 - Meaning the place of reading the four Shastras.] or school. Every morning the teacher and his pupils assembled in the hut where the different classes were called up by turns. They laboured till noon, and were allowed only two hours, a moiety of the usual time, for bathing, eating, sleep, and worship, which took up half the period. At 3 P.M. they resumed their labours, repeating to the tutor what they had learned by heart, and listening to the meaning of it: this lasted till twilight. They then worshipped, ate and drank for an hour: after which came a return of study, repeating the day’s lessons, till 10 P.M.

In their rare days of ease – for the learned priest, mindful of the words of the wise, did not wish to dull them by everlasting work – they were enjoined to disport themselves with the gravity and the decorum that befit young Samditats, not to engage in night frolics, not to use free jests or light expressions, not to draw pictures on the walls, not to eat honey, flesh, and sweet substances turned acid, not to talk to little girls at the well-side, on no account to wear sandals, carry an umbrella, or handle a die even for love, and by no means to steal their neighbours’ mangos.

As they advanced in years their attention during work time was unremittingly directed to the Vedas. Worldly studies were almost excluded, or to speak more correctly, whenever worldly studies were brought upon the carpet, they were so evil entreated, that they well nigh lost all form and feature. History became ‘The Annals of India on Brahminical Principles,’ opposed to the Buddhistical; geography ‘The Lands of the Vedas,’ none other being deemed worthy of notice; and law, ‘The Institutes of Manu,’ then almost obsolete, despite their exceeding sanctity.

But Jatu-harini[123 - A certain goddess who plays tricks with mankind. If a son when grown up act differently from what his parents did, people say that he has been changed in the womb.] had evidently changed these children before they were born; and Shani[124 - Shani is the planet Saturn, which has an exceedingly baleful influence in India as elsewhere.] must have been in the ninth mansion when they came to light.

Each youth as he attained the mature age of twelve was formally entered at the University of Kasi, where, without loss of time, the first became a gambler, the second a confirmed libertine, the third a thief, and the fourth a high Buddhist, or in other words an utter atheist.

Here King Vikram frowned at his son, a hint that he had better not behave himself as the children of highly moral and religious parents usually do. The young prince understood him, and briefly remarking that such things were common in distinguished Brahman families, asked the Baital what he meant by the word ‘Atheist?’

Of a truth (answered the Vampire) it is most difficult to explain. The sages assign to it three or four several meanings: first, one who denies that the gods exist; secondly, one who owns that the gods exist but denies that they busy themselves with human affairs; and thirdly, one who believes in the gods and in their providence, but also believes that they are easily to be set aside. Similarly some atheists derive all things from dead and unintelligent matter; others from matter living and energetic but without sense or will; others from matter with forms and qualities generable and conceptible; and others from a plastic and methodical nature. Thus the Vishnu Swamis of the world have invested the subject with some confusion. The simple, that is to say, the mass of mortality, have confounded that confusion by reproachfully applying the word atheist to those whose opinions differ materially from their own.

But I being at present, perhaps happily for myself, a Vampire, and having, just now, none of these human or inhuman ideas, meant simply to say that the pious priest’s fourth son being great at second and small in the matter of first causes, adopted to their fullest extent the doctrines of the philosophical Bauddhas.[125 - The Eleatic or Materialistic school of Hindu philosophy, which agrees to explode an intelligent separate First Cause.] Nothing according to him exists but the five elements, earth, water, fire, air (or wind), and vacuum, and from the last proceeded the penultimate, and so forth. With the sage Patanjali, he held the universe to have the power of perpetual progression.[126 - The writings of this school give an excellent view of the ‘progressive system,’ which has popularly been asserted to be a modern idea. But Hindu philosophy seems to have exhausted every fancy that can spring from the brain of man.] He called that Matra (matter), which is an eternal and infinite principle, beginningless and endless. Organisation, intelligence, and design, he opined are inherent in matter as growth is in a tree. He did not believe in soul or spirit, because it could not be detected in the body, and because it was a departure from physiological analogy. The idea ‘I am,’ according to him, was not the identification of spirit with matter, but a product of the mutation of matter in this cloud-like, error-formed world. He believed in Substance (Sat) and scoffed at Unsubstance (Asat). He asserted the subtlety and globularity of atoms which are uncreate. He made mind and intellect a mere secretion of the brain, or rather words expressing not a thing, but a state of things. Reason was to him developed instinct, and life an element of the atmosphere affecting certain organisms. He held good and evil to be merely geographical and chronological expressions, and he opined that what is called Evil is mostly an active and transitive form of Good. Law was his great Creator of all things, but he refused a creator of law, because such a creator would require another creator, and so on in a quasi-interminable series up to absurdity. This reduced his law to a manner of haphazard. To those who, arguing against it, asked him their favourite question, How often might a man after he had jumbled a set of letters in a bag fling them out upon the ground before they would fall into an exact poem? he replied that the calculation was beyond his arithmetic, but that the man had only to jumble and fling long enough inevitably to arrive at that end. He rejected the necessity as well as the existence of revelation, and he did not credit the miracles of Krishna, because, according to him, nature never suspends her laws, and, moreover, he had never seen aught supernatural. He ridiculed the idea of Mahapralaya, or the great destruction, for as the world had no beginning, so it will have no end. He objected to absorption, facetiously observing with the sage Jamadagni, that it was pleasant to eat sweetmeats, but that for his part he did not wish to become the sweetmeat itself. He would not believe that Vishnu had formed the universe out of the wax in his ears. He positively asserted that trees are not bodies in which the consequences of merit and demerit are received. Nor would he conclude that to men were attached rewards and punishments from all eternity. He made light of the Sanskara, or sacrament. He admitted Satwa, Raja, and Tama,[127 - Tama is the natural state of matter, Raja is passion acting upon nature, and Satwa is excellence. These are the three gunas or qualities of matter.] but only as properties of matter. He acknowledged gross matter (Sthula-sharir), and atomic matter (Shukshma-sharir), but not Linga-sharir, or the archetype of bodies. To doubt all things was the foundation of his theory, and to scoff at all who would not doubt was the cornerstone of his practice. In debate he preferred logical and mathematical grounds, requiring a categorical ‘because’ in answer to his ‘why?’ He was full of morality and natural religion, which some say is no religion at all. He gained the name of atheist by declaring with Gotama that there are innumerable worlds, that the earth has nothing beneath it but the circumambient air, and that the core of the globe is incandescent. And he was called a practical atheist – a worse form, apparently – for supporting the following dogma: ‘that though creation may attest that a creator has been, it supplies no evidence to prove that a creator still exists.’ On which occasion, Shiromani, a nonplussed theologian, asked him, ‘By whom and for what purpose wast thou sent on earth?’ The youth scoffed at the word ‘sent,’ and replied, ‘Not being thy Supreme Intelligence, or Infinite Nihility, I am unable to explain the phenomenon.’ Upon which he quoted —

How sunk in darkness Gaur must be
Whose guide is blind Shiromani!