Vikram and the Vampire
The old philosophers, believing in a ‘Sat’ (τὸ ὄν), postulated an Asat (τὸ μὴ ὄν) and made the latter the root of the former.
80
In Western India, a place celebrated for suicides.
81
Kama Deva. ‘Out on thee, foul fiend, talk’st thou of nothing but ladies?’
82
The pipal or Ficus religiosa, a favourite roosting place for fiends.
83
India.
84
The ancient name of a priest by profession, meaning ‘præpositus’ or præses. He was the friend and counsellor of a chief, the minister of a king, and his companion in peace and war. (M. Müller’s Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 485.)
85
Lakshmi, the Goddess of Prosperity. Raj-Lakshmi would mean the King’s Fortune, which we should call tutelary genius. Lakshichara is our ‘luckless,’ forming, as Mr. Ward says, an extraordinary coincidence of sound and meaning in languages so different. But the derivations are very distinct.
86
The Monkey God.
87
Generally written ‘Banyan.’
88
The daughter of Raja Janaka, married to Ramachandra. The latter placed his wife under the charge of his brother Lakshmana, and went into the forest to worship, when the demon Ravana disguised himself as a beggar, and carried off the prize.
89
This great king was tricked by the god Vishnu out of the sway of heaven and earth, but from his exceeding piety he was appointed to reign in Patala, or Hades.
90
The procession is fair game, and is often attacked in the dark with sticks and stones, causing serious disputes. At the supper the guests confer the obligation by their presence, and are exceedingly exacting.
91
Rati is the wife of Kama, the God of Desire; and we explain the word by ‘Spring personified.’
92
The Indian Cuckoo (Cuculus Indicus). It is supposed to lay its eggs in the nest of the crow.
93
This is the well-known Ghi or Ghee, the one sauce of India, which is as badly off in that matter as England.
94
The European reader will observe that it is her purity which carries the heroine through all these perils. Moreover, that her virtue is its own reward, as it loses to her the world.
95
Literally, ‘one of all tastes’ – a wild or gay man, we should say.
96
These shoes are generally made of rags and bits of leather; they have often toes behind the foot, with other similar contrivances, yet they scarcely ever deceive an experienced man.
97
The high-toper is a swell thief, the other is a low dog.
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Engaged in shoplifting.
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The moon.
100
The judge.
101
To be lagged is to be taken; scragging is hanging.
102
The tongue.
103
This is the god Kartikeya, a mixture of Mars and Mercury, who revealed to a certain Yugacharya the scriptures known as ‘Chauriya-Vidya’ – Anglice, ‘Thieves’ Manual.’ The classical robbers of the Hindu drama always perform according to its precepts. There is another work respected by thieves, and called the ‘Chora-Pancha-shika,’ because consisting of fifty lines.
104
Supposed to be a good omen.
105
Share the booty.
106
Bhawani is one of the many forms of the destroying goddess, the wife of Shiva.
107
Wretches who kill with the narcotic seed of the stramonium.
108
Better known as ‘Thugs,’ which in India means simply ‘rascals.’
109
Crucifixion, until late years, was common amongst the Buddhists of the Burmese empire. According to an eye-witness, Mr. F. Carey, the punishment was inflicted in two ways. Sometimes criminals were crucified by their hands and feet being nailed to a scaffold; others were merely tied up, and fed. In these cases the legs and feet of the patient begin to swell and mortify at the expiration of three or four days; men are said to have lived in this state for a fortnight, and at last they expired from fatigue and mortification. The sufferings from cramp also must be very severe. In India generally impalement was more common than crucifixion.
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Our Suttee. There is an admirable Hindu proverb, which says, ‘No one knows the ways of woman; she kills her husband and becomes a Sati.’
111
Fate and Destiny are rather Moslem than Hindu fancies.
112
Properly speaking, the husbandman should plough with not less than four bullocks; but few can afford this. If he plough with a cow or a bullock, and not with a bull, the rice produced by his ground is unclean, and may not be used in any religious ceremony.
113
A shout of triumph, like our ‘Huzza’ or ‘Hurrah!’ of late degraded into ‘Hooray.’ ‘Hari bol’ is of course religious, meaning ‘Call upon Hari!’ i.e. Krishna, i.e. Vishnu.
114
This form of suicide is one of those recognised in India. So in Europe we read of fanatics who, with a suicidal ingenuity, have succeeded in crucifying themselves.
115
The river of Jaganath in Orissa; it shares the honours of sanctity with some twenty-nine others, and in the lower regions it represents the classical Styx.
116
Cupid. His wife Rati is the spring personified. The Hindu poets always unite love and spring, and perhaps physiologically they are correct.
117
An incarnation of the third person of the Hindu Triad, or Triumvirate, Shiva the God of Destruction, the Indian Bacchus. The image has five faces, and each face has three eyes. In Bengal it is found in many villages, and the women warn their children not to touch it on pain of being killed.
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A village Brahman on stated occasions receives fees from all the villagers.
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The land of Greece.
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Savans, professors. So in the old saying, ‘Hanta, Pandit Sansara.’ – Alas! the world is learned! This a little antedates the well-known schoolmaster.
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.
122
Meaning the place of reading the four Shastras.
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.
124
Shani is the planet Saturn, which has an exceedingly baleful influence in India as elsewhere.
125
The Eleatic or Materialistic school of Hindu philosophy, which agrees to explode an intelligent separate First Cause.
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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.
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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.
128
Spiritual preceptors and learned men.
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!
130
Quotations from standard works on Hindu criminal law, which in some points at least is almost as absurd as our civilised codes.
131
Hindus carry their money tied up in a kind of sheet, which is wound round the waist and thrown over the shoulder.
132
A thieves’ manual in the Sanskrit tongue; it aspires to the dignity of a ‘Scripture.’
133
All sounds, say the Hindus, are of similar origin, and they do not die; if they did, they could not be remembered.
134
Gold pieces.
135
These are the qualifications specified by Hindu classical authorities as necessary to make a distinguished thief.
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.
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.
138
The Hindu Mercury, god of rascals.
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.
140
Stanzas, generally speaking on serious subjects.
141
Whitlows on the nails show that the sufferer, in the last life, stole gold from a Brahman.
142
A low caste Hindu, who catches and exhibits snakes and performs other such mean offices.
143
Meaning in spite of themselves.
144
When the moon is in a certain lunar mansion, at the conclusion of the wet season.
145
In Hindostan, it is the prevailing wind of the hot weather.
146
Vishnu, as a dwarf, sank down into and secured in the lower regions the Raja Bali, who by his piety and prayerfulness was subverting the reign of the lesser gods; as Ramachandra he built a bridge between Lanka (Ceylon) and the main land; and as Krishna he defended, by holding up a hill as an umbrella for them, his friends the shepherds and shepherdesses from the thunders of Indra, whose worship they had neglected.
147
The priestly caste sprang, as has been said, from the noblest part of the Demiurgus; the three others from lower members.
148
A chew of betel leaf and spices is offered by the master of the house when dismissing a visitor.
149
Respectable Hindus say that receiving a fee for a daughter is like selling flesh.
150
A modern custom amongst the low caste is for the bride and bridegroom, in the presence of friends, to place a flower garland on each others necks, and thus declare themselves man and wife. The old classical Gandharva-lagan has been before explained.
151
Meaning that the sight of each other will cause a smile, and that what one purposes the other will consent to.
152
This would be the verdict of a Hindu jury.
153
Because stained with the powder of Mhendi, or the Lawsonia inermis shrub.
154
Kansa’s son; so called because the god Shiva, when struck by his shafts, destroyed him with a fiery glance.
155
‘Great Brahman;’ used contemptuously to priests who officiate for servile men. Brahmans lose their honour by the following things: By becoming servants to the king; by pursuing any secular business; by acting priests to Shudras (serviles); by officiating as priests for a whole village; and by neglecting any part of the three daily services. Many violate these rules; yet to kill a Brahman is still one of the five great Hindu sins. In the present age of the world, the Brahman may not accept a gift of cows or of gold; of course he despises the law. As regards monkey worship, a certain Rajah of Nadiya is said to have expended 10,000l. in marrying two monkeys with all the parade and splendour of the Hindu rite.
156
The celebrated Gayatri, the Moslem Kalmah.
157
Kama again.
158
From ‘Man,’ to think; primarily meaning, what makes man think.
159
The Cirrhadæ of classical writers.
160
The Hindu Pluto; also called the Just King.
161
Yama judges the dead, whose souls go to him in four hours and forty minutes; therefore a corpse cannot be burned till after that time. His residence is Yamalaya, and it is on the south side of the earth; down South, as we say. (I Sam. xxv. 1, and xxx. 15.) The Hebrews, like the Hindus, held the northern parts of the world to be higher than the southern. Hindus often joke a man who is seen walking in that direction, and ask him where he is going.
162
The ‘Ganges,’ in heaven called Mandakini. I have no idea why we still adhere to our venerable corruption of the word.
163
The fabulous mountain supposed by Hindu geographers to occupy the centre of the universe.
164
The all-bestowing tree in Indra’s Paradise, which grants everything asked of it. It is the Tuba of El Islam, and is not unknown to the Apocryphal New Testament.
165
‘Vikramaditya, Lord of the Saka.’ This is prévoyance on the part of the Vampire; the king had not acquired the title.
166
On the sixth day after the child’s birth, the god Vidhata writes all its fate upon its forehead. The Moslems have a similar idea, and probably it passed to the Hindus.
167
Goddess of eloquence. ‘The waters of the Saraswati’ is the classical Hindu phrase for the mirage.
168
This story is perhaps the least interesting in the collection. I have translated it literally, in order to give an idea of the original. The reader will remark in it the source of our own nursery tale about the princess who was so high born and delicately bred, that she could discover the three peas laid beneath a straw mattress and four feather beds. The Hindus, however, believe that Sybaritism can be carried so far; I remember my Pandit asserting the truth of the story.
169
A minister. The word, as is the case with many in this collection, is quite modern Moslem, and anachronistic.
170
The cow is called the mother of the gods, and is declared by Bramha, the first person of the triad, Vishnu and Shiva being the second and the third, to be a proper object of worship. ‘If a European speak to the Hindu about eating the flesh of cows,’ says an old missionary, ‘they immediately raise their hands to their ears; yet milkmen, carmen, and farmers beat the cow as unmercifully as a carrier of coals beats his ass in England.’
The Jains or Jainas (from ji, to conquer; as subduing the passions) are one of the atheistical sects with whom the Brahmans have of old carried on the fiercest religious controversies, ending in many a sanguinary fight. Their tenets are consequently exaggerated and ridiculed, as in the text. They believe that there is no such God as the common notions on the subject point out, and they hold that the highest act of virtue is to abstain from injuring sentient creatures. Man does not possess an immortal spirit: death is the same to Bramha and to a fly. Therefore there is no heaven or hell separate from present pleasure or pain. Hindu Epicureans: – ‘Epicuri de grege porci.’
171
Narak is one of the multitudinous places of Hindu punishment, said to adjoin the residence of Ajarna. The less cultivated Jains believe in a region of torment. The illuminati, however, have a sovereign contempt for the Creator, for a future state, and for all religious ceremonies. As Hindus, however, they believe in future births of mankind, somewhat influenced by present actions. The ‘next birth’ in the mouth of a Hindu, we are told, is the same as ‘to-morrow’ in the mouth of a Christian. The metempsychosis is on an extensive scale: according to some, a person who loses human birth must pass through eight millions of successive incarnations – fish, insects, worms, birds, and beasts – before he can reappear as a man.
172
Jogi, or Yogi, properly applies to followers of the Yoga or Patanjala school, who by ascetic practices acquire power over the elements. Vulgarly, it is a general term for mountebank vagrants, worshippers of Shiva. The Janganis adore the same deity, and carry about a Linga. The Sevras are Jain beggars, who regard their chiefs as superior to the gods of other sects. The Sannyasis are mendicant followers of Shiva; they never touch metals or fire, and, in religious parlance, they take up the staff. They are opposed to the Viragis, worshippers of Vishnu, who contend as strongly against the worshippers of gods who receive bloody offerings, as a Christian could do against idolatry.
173
The Brahman, or priest, is supposed to proceed from the mouth of Bramha, the creating person of the Triad; the Khshatriyas (soldiers) from his arms; the Vaishyas (enterers into business) from his thighs; and the Shudras, ‘who take refuge in the Brahmans,’ from his feet. Only high caste men should assume the thread at the age of puberty.
174
Soma, the moon, I have said, is masculine in India.
175
Pluto.
176
Nothing astonishes Hindus so much as the apparent want of affection between the European parent and child.
177
A third marriage is held improper and baneful to a Hindu woman. Hence, before the nuptials they betroth the man to a tree, upon which the evil expends itself, and the tree dies.
178
Kama.
179
An oath, meaning, ‘From such a falsehood preserve me, Ganges!’
180
The Indian Neptune.
181
A highly insulting form of adjuration.
182
The British Islands – according to Wilford.
183
Literally the science (veda) of the bow (dhanush). This weapon, as everything amongst the Hindus, had a divine origin; it was of three kinds – the common bow, the pellet or stone bow, and the crossbow or catapult.
184
It is a disputed point whether the ancient Hindus did or did not know the use of gunpowder.
185
It is said to have discharged balls, each 6,400 pounds in weight.
186
A kind of Mercury, a god with the head and wings of a bird, who is the Vahan or vehicle of the second person of the Triad, Vishnu.
187
The celebrated burning springs of Baku, near the Caspian, are so called. There are many other ‘fire mouths.’
188
The Hindu Styx.
189
From Yaksha, to eat; as Rakshasas are from Raksha to preserve. See Hardy’s Manual of Buddhism, p. 57.
190
Shiva is always painted white, no one knows why. His wife Gauri has also a European complexion. Hence it is generally said that the sect popularly called ‘Thugs,’ who were worshippers of these murderous gods, spared Englishmen, the latter being supposed to have some rapport with their deities.
191
The Hindu shrine is mostly a small building, with two inner compartments, the vestibule and the Garbagriha, or adytum, in which stands the image.
192
Meaning Kali of the cemetery (Smashana); another form of Durga.
193
Not being able to find victims, this pleasant deity, to satisfy her thirst for the curious juice, cut her own throat that the blood might spout up into her mouth. She once found herself dancing on her husband, and was so shocked that in surprise she put out her tongue to a great length, and remained motionless. She is often represented in this form.
194
This ashtanga, the most ceremonious of the five forms of Hindu salutation, consists of prostrating and of making the eight parts of the body – namely, the temples, nose and chin, knees and hands – touch the ground.
195
‘Sidhis,’ the personified Powers of Nature. At least, so we explain them; but people do not worship abstract powers.
196
The residence of Indra, king of heaven, built by Wishwa-Karma, the architect of the gods.
197
In other words, to the present day, whenever a Hindu novelist, romancer, or tale writer seeks a peg upon which to suspend the texture of his story, he invariably pitches upon the glorious, pious, and immortal memory of that Eastern King Arthur, Vikramaditya, shortly called Vikram.