Vikram and the Vampire | Page 5

not refrain from smiling, covering their mouths
with their garments. At length some one interrupted the general silence
and said:
"O king, is this the son of Indra? You have found a fine bridegroom;
you are indeed happy; don't delay the marriage; delay is improper in
doing good; we never saw so glorious a wedding! It is true that we once
heard of a camel being married to a jenny-ass; when the ass, looking up
to the camel, said, 'Bless me, what a bridegroom!' and the camel,
hearing the voice of the ass, exclaimed, 'Bless me, what a musical
voice!' In that wedding, however, the bride and the bridegroom were
equal; but in this marriage, that such a bride should have such a
bridegroom is truly wonderful."
Other Brahmans then present said:
"O king, at the marriage hour, in sign of joy the sacred shell is blown,
but thou hast no need of that" (alluding to the donkey's braying).
The women all cried out:
"O my mother![FN#3] what is this? at the time of marriage to have an
ass! What a miserable thing! What! will he give that angelic girl in
wedlock to a donkey?"
At length Gandharba-Sena, addressing the king in Sanskrit, urged him
to perform his promise. He reminded his future father-in-law that there
is no act more meritorious than speaking truth; that the mortal frame is
a mere dress, and that wise men never estimate the value of a person by

his clothes. He added that he was in that shape from the curse of his
sire, and that during the night he had the body of a man. Of his being
the son of Indra there could be no doubt.
Hearing the donkey thus speak Sanskrit, for it was never known that an
ass could discourse in that classical tongue, the minds of the people
were changed, and they confessed that, although he had an asinine form
he was unquestionably the son of Indra. The king, therefore, gave him
his daughter in marriage.[FN#4] The metamorphosis brings with it
many misfortunes and strange occurrences, and it lasts till Fate in the
author's hand restores the hero to his former shape and honours.
Gandharba-Sena is a quasi-historical personage, who lived in the
century preceding the Christian era. The story had, therefore, ample
time to reach the ears of the learned African Apuleius, who was born
A.D. 130.
The Baital-Pachisi, or Twenty-five (tales of a) Baital[FN#5] - a
Vampire or evil spirit which animates dead bodies - is an old and
thoroughly Hindu repertory. It is the rude beginning of that fictitious
history which ripened to the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, and which,
fostered by the genius of Boccaccio, produced the romance of the
chivalrous days, and its last development, the novel - that prose-epic of
modern Europe.
Composed in Sanskrit, "the language of the gods," alias the Latin of
India, it has been translated into all the Prakrit or vernacular and
modern dialects of the great peninsula. The reason why it has not found
favour with the Moslems is doubtless the highly polytheistic spirit
which pervades it; moreover, the Faithful had already a specimen of
that style of composition. This was the Hitopadesa, or Advice of a
Friend, which, as a line in its introduction informs us, was borrowed
from an older book, the Panchatantra, or Five
Chapters.
It is a collection of apologues recited by a learned Brahman, Vishnu
Sharma by name, for the edification of his pupils, the sons of an Indian
Raja. They have been adapted to or translated into a number of
languages, notably into Pehlvi and Persian, Syriac and Turkish, Greek
and Latin, Hebrew and Arabic. And as the Fables of Pilpay,[FN#6] are
generally known, by name at least, to European litterateurs. . Voltaire

remarks,[FN#7] "Quand on fait reflexion que presque toute la terre a
ete infatuee de pareils comes, et qu'ils ont fait l'education du genre
humain, on trouve les fables de Pilpay, Lokman, d'Esope bien
raisonnables." These tales, detached, but strung together by artificial
means - pearls with a thread drawn through them - are manifest
precursors of the Decamerone, or Ten Days. A modern Italian critic
describes the now classical fiction as a collection of one hundred of
those novels which Boccaccio is believed to have read out at the court
of Queen Joanna of Naples, and which later in life were by him
assorted together by a most simple and ingenious contrivance. But the
great Florentine invented neither his stories nor his " plot," if we may
so call it. He wrote in the middle of the fourteenth century (1344-8)
when the West had borrowed many things from the East, rhymes[FN#8]
and romance, lutes and drums, alchemy and knight-errantry. Many of
the "Novelle" are, as Orientalists well know, to this day sung