Vikram and the Vampire

At length it so happened that the four young men, having frequently been surprised in flagrant delict, were summoned to the dread presence of the university Gurus,[128 - Spiritual preceptors and learned men.] who addressed them as follows: —

‘There are four different characters in the world: he who perfectly obeys the commands; he who practises the commands, but follows evil; he who does neither good nor evil; and he who does nothing but evil. The third character, it is observed, is also an offender, for he neglects that which he ought to observe. But ye all belong to the fourth category.’

Then turning to the elder they said:

‘In works written upon the subject of government it is advised, “Cut off the gambler’s nose and ears, hold up his name to public contempt, and drive him out of the country, that he may thus become an example to others. For they who play must more often lose than win; and losing, they must either pay or not pay. In the latter case they forfeit caste, in the former they utterly reduce themselves. And though a gambler’s wife and children are in the house, do not consider them to be so, since it is not known when they will be lost.[129 - Under certain limitations, gambling is allowed by Hindu law, and the winner has power over the person and property of the loser. No ‘debts of honour’ in Hindostan!] Thus he is left in a state of perfect not-twoness (solitude), and he will be reborn in hell.” O young man! thou hast set a bad example to others, therefore shalt thou immediately exchange this university for a country life.’

Then they spoke to the second offender thus: —

‘The wise shun woman, who can fascinate a man in the twinkling of an eye; but the foolish, conceiving an affection for her, forfeit in the pursuit of pleasure their truthfulness, reputation, and good disposition, their way of life and mode of thought, their vows and their religion. And to such the advice of their spiritual teachers comes amiss, whilst they make others as bad as themselves. For it is said, “He who has lost all sense of shame, fears not to disgrace another;” and there is the proverb, “A wild cat that devours its own young is not likely to let a rat escape;” therefore must thou too, O young man! quit this seat of learning with all possible expedition.’

The young man proceeded to justify himself by quotations from the Lila-shastra, his text-book, by citing such lines as —

Fortune favours folly and force,

and by advising the elderly professors to improve their skill in the peace and war of love. But they drove him out with execrations.

As sagely and as solemnly did the Pandits and the Gurus reprove the thief and the atheist, but they did not dispense the words of wisdom in equal proportions. They warned the former that petty larceny is punishable with fine, theft on a larger scale with mutilation of the hand, and robbery, when detected in the act, with loss of life;[130 - Quotations from standard works on Hindu criminal law, which in some points at least is almost as absurd as our civilised codes.] that for cutting purses, or for snatching them out of a man’s waistcloth,[131 - Hindus carry their money tied up in a kind of sheet, which is wound round the waist and thrown over the shoulder.] the first penalty is chopping off the fingers, the second is the loss of the hand, and the third is death. Then they called him a dishonour to the college, and they said, ‘Thou art as a woman, the greatest of plunderers; other robbers purloin property which is worthless, thou stealest the best; they plunder in the night, thou in the day,’ and so forth. They told him that he was a fellow who had read his Chauriya Vidya to more purpose than his ritual.[132 - A thieves’ manual in the Sanskrit tongue; it aspires to the dignity of a ‘Scripture.’] And they drove him from the door as he in his shamelessness began to quote texts about the four approved ways of housebreaking, namely, picking out burnt bricks, cutting through unbaked bricks, throwing water on a mud wall, and boring one of wood with a centre-bit.

But they spent six mortal hours in convicting the atheist, whose abominations they refuted by every possible argumentation: by inference, by comparison, and by sounds, by Sruti and Smriti, i.e. revelational and traditional, rational and evidential, physical and metaphysical, analytical and synthetical, philosophical and philological, historical, and so forth. But they found all their endeavours vain. ‘For,’ it is said, ‘a man who has lost all shame, who can talk without sense, and who tries to cheat his opponent, will never get tired, and will never be put down.’ He declared that a non-ad was far more probable than a monad (the active principle), or the duad (the passive principle or matter). He compared their faith with a bubble in the water, of which we can never predicate that it does exist or it does not. It is, he said, unreal, as when the thirsty mistakes the meadow mist for a pool of water. He proved the eternity of sound.[133 - All sounds, say the Hindus, are of similar origin, and they do not die; if they did, they could not be remembered.] He impudently recounted and justified all the villanies of the Vamachari or left-handed sects. He told them that they had taken up an ass’s load of religion, and had better apply to honest industry. He fell foul of the gods; accused Yama of kicking his own mother, Indra of tempting the wife of his spiritual guide, and Shiva of associating with low women. Thus, he said, no one can respect them. Do not we say when it thunders awfully, ‘the rascally gods are dying!’ And when it is too wet, ‘these villain gods are sending too much rain?’ Briefly, the young Brahman replied to and harangued them all so impertinently, if not pertinently, that they, waxing angry, fell upon him with their staves, and drove him out of assembly.

Then the four thriftless youths returned home to their father, who in his just indignation had urged their disgrace upon the Pandits and Gurus, otherwise these dignitaries would never have resorted to such extreme measures with so distinguished a house. He took the opportunity of turning them out upon the world, until such time as they might be able to show substantial signs of reform. ‘For,’ he said, ‘those who have read science in their boyhood, and who in youth, agitated by evil passions, have remained in the insolence of ignorance, feel regret in their old age, and are consumed by the fire of avarice.’ In order to supply them with a motive for the task proposed, he stopped their monthly allowance. But he added, if they would repair to the neighbouring university of Jayasthal, and there show themselves something better than a disgrace to their family, he would direct their maternal uncle to supply them with all the necessaries of food and raiment.

In vain the youths attempted, with sighs and tears and threats of suicide, to soften the paternal heart. He was inexorable, for two reasons. In the first place, after wondering away the wonder with which he regarded his own failure, he felt that a stigma now attached to the name of the pious and learned Vishnu Swami, whose lectures upon ‘Management during Teens,’ and whose ‘Brahman Young Man’s Own Book,’ had become standard works. Secondly, from a sense of duty, he determined to omit nothing that might tend to reclaim the reprobates. As regards the monthly allowance being stopped, the reverend man had become every year a little fonder of his purse; he had hoped that his sons would have qualified themselves to take pupils, and thus achieve for themselves, as he phrased it, ‘a genteel independence;’ whilst they openly derided the career, calling it ‘an admirable provision for the more indigent members of the middle classes.’ For which reason he referred them to their maternal uncle, a man of known and remarkable penuriousness.

The four ne’er-do-weels, foreseeing what awaited them at Jayasthal, deferred it as a last resource; determining first to see a little life, and to push their way in the world, before condemning themselves to the tribulations of reform.

They tried to live without a monthly allowance, and notably they failed; it was squeezing, as men say, oil from sand. The gambler, having no capital, and, worse still, no credit, lost two or three suvernas[134 - Gold pieces.] at play, and could not pay them; in consequence of which he was soundly beaten with iron-shod staves, and was nearly compelled by the keeper of the hell to sell himself into slavery. Thus he became disgusted; and telling his brethren that they would find him at Jayasthal, he departed, with the intention of studying wisdom.

A month afterwards came the libertine’s turn to be disappointed. He could no longer afford fine new clothes; even a well-washed coat was beyond his means. He had reckoned upon his handsome face, and he had matured a plan for laying various elderly conquests under contribution. Judge, therefore, his disgust when all the women – high and low, rich and poor, old and young, ugly and beautiful – seeing the end of his waistcloth thrown empty over his shoulder, passed him in the streets without even deigning a look. The very shopkeepers’ wives, who once had adored his mustachio and had never ceased talking of his ‘elegant’ gait, despised him; and the wealthy old person who formerly supplied his small feet with the choicest slippers, left him to starve. Upon which he also, in a state of repentance, followed his brother to acquire knowledge.

‘Am I not,’ quoth the thief to himself, ‘a cat in climbing, a deer in running, a snake in twisting, a hawk in pouncing, a dog in scenting? – keen as a hare, tenacious as a wolf, strong as a lion? – a lamp in the night, a horse on a plain, a mule on a stony path, a boat in the water, a rock on land?’[135 - These are the qualifications specified by Hindu classical authorities as necessary to make a distinguished thief.] The reply to his own questions was of course affirmative. But despite all these fine qualities, and notwithstanding his scrupulous strictness in invocating the housebreaking tool and in devoting a due portion of his gains to the gods of plunder,[136 - Every Hindu is in a manner born to a certain line of life, virtuous or vicious, honest or dishonest; and his Dharma, or religious duty, consists in conforming to the practice and the worship of his profession. The ‘Thug,’ for instance, worships Bhawani, who enables him to murder successfully; and his remorse would arise from neglecting to murder.] he was caught in a store-room by the proprietor, who inexorably handed him over to justice. As he belonged to the priestly caste,[137 - Hindu law sensibly punishes, in theory at least, for the same offence the priest more severely than the layman – a hint for him to practise what he preaches.] the fine imposed upon him was heavy. He could not pay it, and therefore he was thrown into a dungeon, where he remained for some time. But at last he escaped from jail, when he made his parting bow to Kartikeya,[138 - The Hindu Mercury, god of rascals.] stole a blanket from one of the guards, and set out for Jayasthal, cursing his old profession.

The atheist also found himself in a position that deprived him of all his pleasures. He delighted in after-dinner controversies, and in bringing the light troops of his wit to bear upon the unwieldy masses of lore and logic opposed to him by polemical Brahmans who, out of respect for his father, did not lay an action against him for overpowering them in theological disputation.[139 - A penal offence in India. How is it that we English have omitted to codify it? The laws of Manu also punish severely all disdainful expressions, such as ‘tush’ or ‘pish,’ addressed during argument to a priest.] In the strange city to which he had removed no one knew the son of Vishnu Swami, and no one cared to invite him to the house. Once he attempted his usual trick upon a knot of sages who, sitting round a tank, were recreating themselves with quoting mystical Sanskrit shlokas[140 - Stanzas, generally speaking on serious subjects.] of abominable long-windedness. The result was his being obliged to ply his heels vigorously in flight from the justly incensed literati, to whom he had said ‘tush’ and ‘pish,’ at least a dozen times in as many minutes. He therefore also followed the example of his brethren, and started for Jayasthal with all possible expedition.

Arrived at the house of their maternal uncle, the young men, as by one assent, began to attempt the unloosening of his purse-strings. Signally failing in this and in other notable schemes, they determined to lay in that stock of facts and useful knowledge which might reconcile them with their father, and restore them to that happy life at Gaur which they then despised, and which now brought tears into their eyes.

Then they debated with one another what they should study.

* * * * *

That branch of the preternatural, popularly called ‘white magic,’ found with them favour.

* * * * *

They chose a Guru or teacher strictly according to the orders of their faith, a wise man of honourable family and affable demeanour, who was not a glutton nor leprous, nor blind of one eye, nor blind of both eyes, nor very short, nor suffering from whitlows,[141 - Whitlows on the nails show that the sufferer, in the last life, stole gold from a Brahman.] asthma, or other disease, nor noisy and talkative, nor with any defect about the fingers and toes, nor subject to his wife.

* * * * *

A grand discovery had been lately made by a certain physiologico-philosophico-psychologico-materialist, a Jayasthalian. In investigating the vestiges of creation, the cause of causes, the effect of effects, and the original origin of that Matra (matter) which some regard as an entity, others as a nonentity, others self-existent, others merely specious and therefore unexistent, he became convinced that the fundamental form of organic being is a globule having another globule within itself. After inhabiting a garret and diving into the depths of his self-consciousness for a few score of years, he was able to produce such complex globule in triturated and roasted flint by means of – I will not say what. Happily for creation in general, the discovery died a natural death some centuries ago. An edifying spectacle, indeed, for the world to see; a cross old man sitting amongst his gallipots and crucibles, creating animalculæ, providing the corpses of birds, beasts, and fishes with what is vulgarly called life, and supplying to epigenesis all the latest improvements!

In those days the invention, being a novelty, engrossed the thoughts of the universal learned, who were in a fever of excitement about it. Some believed in it so implicitly that they saw in every experiment a hundred things which they did not see. Others were so sceptical and contradictory that they would not perceive what they did see. Those blended with each fact their own deductions, whilst these span round every reality the web of their own prejudices. Curious to say, the Jayasthalians, amongst whom the luminous science arose, hailed it with delight, whilst the Gaurians derided its claim to be considered an important addition to human knowledge.

Let me try to remember a few of their words.

‘Unfortunate human nature,’ wrote the wise of Gaur against the wise of Jayasthal, ‘wanted no crowning indignity but this! You had already proved that the body is made of the basest element – earth. You had argued away the immovability, the ubiquity, the permanency, the eternity, and the divinity of the soul, for is not your favourite axiom, “It is the nature of limbs which thinketh in man?” The immortal mind is, according to you, an ignoble viscus; the god-like gift of reason is the instinct of a dog somewhat highly developed. Still you left us something to hope. Still you allowed us one boast. Still life was a thread connecting us with the Giver of Life. But now, with an impious hand, in blasphemous rage ye have rent asunder that last frail tie.’ And so forth.

‘Welcome! thrice welcome! this latest and most admirable development of human wisdom,’ wrote the sage Jayasthalians against the sage Gaurians, ‘which has assigned to man his proper state and status and station in the magnificent scale of being. We have not created the facts which we have investigated, and which we now proudly publish. We have proved materialism to be nature’s own system. But our philosophy of matter cannot overturn any truth, because, if erroneous, it will necessarily sink into oblivion; if real, it will tend only to instruct and to enlighten the world. Wise are ye in your generation, O ye sages of Gaur, yet withal wondrous illogical.’ And much of this kind.

Concerning all which, mighty king! I, as a Vampire, have only to remark that those two learned bodies, like your Rajaship’s Nine Gems of Science, were in the habit of talking most about what they least understood.

The four young men applied the whole force of their talents to mastering the difficulties of the life-giving process; and, in due time, their industry obtained its reward.

* * * * *

Then they determined to return home. As with beating hearts they approached the old city, their birthplace, and gazed with moistened eyes upon its tall spires and grim pagodas, its verdant meads and venerable groves, they saw a Kanjar,[142 - A low caste Hindu, who catches and exhibits snakes and performs other such mean offices.] who, having tied up in a bundle the skin and bones of a tiger which he had found dead, was about to go on his way. Then said the thief to the gambler, ‘Take we these remains with us, and by means of them prove the truth of our science before the people of Gaur, to the offence of their noses.’[143 - Meaning in spite of themselves.] Being now possessed of knowledge, they resolved to apply it to its proper purpose, namely, power over the property of others. Accordingly, the wencher, the gambler, and the atheist kept the Kanjar in conversation whilst the thief vivified a shank bone; and the bone thereupon stood upright, and hopped about in so grotesque and wonderful a way that the man, being frightened, fled as if I had been close behind him.

Vishnu Swami had lately written a very learned commentary on the mystical words of Lokakshi:

‘The Scriptures are at variance – the tradition is at variance. He who gives a meaning of his own, quoting the Vedas, is no philosopher.

‘True philosophy, through ignorance, is concealed as in the fissures of a rock.

‘But the way of the Great One – that is to be followed.’

And the success of his book had quite effaced from the Brahman mind the holy man’s failure in bringing up his children. He followed up this by adding to his essay on education a twentieth tome, containing recipes for the ‘Reformation of Prodigals.’

The learned and reverend father received his sons with open arms. He had heard from his brother-in-law that the youths were qualified to support themselves, and when informed that they wished to make a public experiment of their science, he exerted himself, despite his disbelief in it, to forward their views.

The Pandits and Gurus were long before they would consent to attend what they considered dealings with Yama (the Devil). In consequence, however, of Vishnu Swami’s name and importunity, at length, on a certain day, all the pious, learned, and reverend tutors, teachers, professors, prolocutors, pastors, spiritual fathers, poets, philosophers, mathematicians, schoolmasters, pedagogues, bear-leaders, institutors, gerund-grinders, preceptors, dominies, brushers, coryphæi, dry-nurses, coaches, mentors, monitors, lecturers, prelectors, fellows, and heads of houses at the university of Gaur, met together in a large garden, where they usually diverted themselves out of hours with ball-tossing, pigeon-tumbling, and kite-flying.

Presently the four young men, carrying their bundle of bones and the other requisites, stepped forward, walking slowly with eyes downcast, like shrinking cattle: for it is said, the Brahman must not run, even when it rains.

After pronouncing an impromptu speech, composed for them by their father, and so stuffed with erudition that even the writer hardly understood it, they announced their wish to prove, by ocular demonstration, the truth of a science upon which their short-sighted rivals of Jayasthal had cast cold water, but which, they remarked in the eloquent peroration of their discourse, the sages of Gaur had welcomed with that wise and catholic spirit of enquiry which had ever characterised their distinguished body.

Huge words, involved sentences, and the high-flown compliment, exceedingly undeserved, obscured, I suppose, the bright wits of the intellectual convocation, which really began to think that their liberality of opinion deserved all praise.

None objected to what was being prepared, except one of the heads of houses; his appeal was generally scouted, because his Sanskrit style was vulgarly intelligible, and he had the bad name of being a practical man. The metaphysician Rashik Lall sneered to Vaiswata the poet, who passed on the look to the theo-philosopher Vardhaman. Haridatt the antiquarian whispered the metaphysician Vasudeva, who burst into a loud laugh; whilst Narayan, Jagasharma, and Devaswami, all very learned in the Vedas, opened their eyes and stared at him with well-simulated astonishment. So he, being offended, said nothing more, but arose and walked home.

A great crowd gathered round the four young men and their father, as opening the bundle that contained the tiger’s remains, they prepared for their task.

One of the operators spread the bones upon the ground and fixed each one into its proper socket, not forgetting even the teeth and tusks.

The second connected, by means of a marvellous unguent, the skeleton with the muscles and heart of an elephant, which he had procured for the purpose.

The third drew from his pouch the brain and eyes of a large tom-cat, which he carefully fitted into the animal’s skull, and then covered the body with the hide of a young rhinoceros.

Then the fourth – the atheist – who had been directing the operation, produced a globule having another globule within itself. And as the crowd pressed on them, craning their necks, breathless with anxiety, he placed the Principle of Organic Life in the tiger’s body with such effect that the monster immediately heaved its chest, breathed, agitated its limbs, opened its eyes, jumped to its feet, shook itself, glared around, and begun to gnash its teeth and lick its chops, lashing the while its ribs with its tail.