Stories and Poems

King Vikram and the Vampire

Summary of SEVENTH STORY

Many Indians may know the Panchatantra version of the story, which is four highly educated people but with no basic commonsense reconstructing a tiger from it's bones and give life. They do not realize that it will eat them if brought alive.

While the story is interesting in its own right, I find the discussion on God and Atheist even more interesting. At one point in the story, the vampire describes the belief of atheists as follows:

"He (Atheist) called that Matra (matter), which is an eternal and infinite principle, beginningless and endless. Organization, 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 tbe 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 favorite 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, ...."

It is quite fascinating to see that some of the arguments are quite scientific and thoughtful! At one time University Gurus in the story wanted to get rid of the four brothers who were gambler, womanizer, theif and Buddhist (Atheist). It was easy to justify ousting of the first three, but took six hours to convict the atheist! The Gurus tried every possible ways to argue: : "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!"

I feel that the Buddhist(Atheist) position stronger than the Gurus who anyway ousted him without proper justification!

Sir Burton must have really enjoyed translating these stories as can be seen by a remark in the footnote of the story: "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 seem to have exhausted every fancy that can spring from the brain of man."

Eleventh story seems to be amazing story where the Vampire describes about the future! He predicts the ways India will be conquered by British people (White people ruled by the queen!) and describes the ways of the White men and women, Women's liberation movement, removal of the caste system in India etc with amazing clarity.

The interesting fact is that this story was told from the perspective of his time which condemned the future, and yet that "future", which is our present, appears right to me and look some of the customs of the past with disgust! So after reading this story, don't be too hard on your children of their ways!

By the way the description of the puzzle (as mentioned in the title of the story) begins after the 2/3rd of the story is over. It is about relationships, best explained as follows:

A(male) marries B(female) --> they have a son C

Son of A marries mother of B --> they have a daughter, D

What relationship will there be between the children i.e., C and D ?

It gives mind some spin without much conclusion and King Vikram could not answer. Thus ending the cycle of Vampire telling the stories.