FillMash

13. CONCLUSION.

At Raja Vikram's silence the Baital was greatly surprised, and he praised the royal courage and resolution to the skies. Still he did not give up the contest at once.

12. The Vampire's Eleventh Story. Which Puzzles Raja Vikram.

There is a queer time coming, O Raja Vikram!--a queer time coming (said the Vampire), a queer time coming. Elderly people like you talk abundantly about the good old days that were, and about the degeneracy of the days that are. I wonder what you would say if you could but look forward a few hundred years.

11. The Vampire's Tenth Story. Of the Marvellous Delicacy of Three Queens.

The Baital said, O king, in the Gaur country, Vardhman by name, there is a city, and one called Gunshekhar was the Raja of that land. His minister was one Abhaichand, a Jain, by whose teachings the king also came into the Jain faith.

10. The Vampire's Ninth Story. Showing That a Man's Wife Belongs Not to His Body but to His Head.

Far and wide through the lovely land overrun by the Arya from the Western Highlands spread the fame of Unmadini, the beautiful daughter of Haridas the Brahman. In the numberless odes, sonnets, and acrostics addressed to her by a hundred Pandits and poets her charms were sung with prodigious triteness.

09. The Vampire's Eighth Story. Of the Use and Misuse of Magic Pills.

The lady Chandraprabha, daughter of the Raja Subichar, was a particularly beautiful girl, and marriage-able withal. One day as Vasanta, the Spring, began to assert its reign over the world, animate and inanimate, she went accompanied by her young friends and companions to stroll about her father's pleasure-garden.

08. The Vampire's Seventh Story. Showing the Exceeding Folly of Many Wise Fools.

The Baital resumed.

07. The Vampire's Sixth Story. In Which Three Men Dispute about a Woman.

06. The Vampire's Fifth Story. Of the Thief Who Laughed and Wept.

Your majesty (quoth the demon, with unusual politeness), there is a country called Malaya, on the western coast of the land of Bharat--you see that I am particular in specifying the place--and in it was a city known as Chandrodaya, whose king was named Randhir.

05. The Vampire's Fourth Story. Of A Woman Who Told The Truth.

"Listen, great king!" again began the Baital.

04. The Vampire's Third Story. Of a High-minded Family.

03. The Vampire's Second Story. Of the Relative Villany of Men and Women.

In the great city of Bhogavati dwelt, once upon a time, a young prince, concerning whom I may say that he strikingly resembled this amiable son of your majesty.

Raja Vikram was silent, nor did he acknowledge the Baital's indirect compliment. He hated flattery, but he liked, when flattered, to be flattered in his own person; a feature in their royal patron's character which the Nine Gems of Science had turned to their own account.

02. The Vampire's Second Story. Of the Relative Villany of Men and Women.

In the great city of Bhogavati dwelt, once upon a time, a young prince, concerning whom I may say that he strikingly resembled this amiable son of your majesty.

Raja Vikram was silent, nor did he acknowledge the Baital's indirect compliment. He hated flattery, but he liked, when flattered, to be flattered in his own person; a feature in their royal patron's character which the Nine Gems of Science had turned to their own account.

02. The Vampire's First Story. In which a man deceives a woman.

In Benares once reigned a mighty prince, by name Pratapamukut, to whose eighth son Vajramukut happened the strangest adventure.

01. INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

00. PREFACE

The Baital-Pachisi, or Twenty-five Tales of a Baital is the history of a huge Bat, Vampire, or Evil Spirit which inhabited and animated dead bodies. It is an old, and thoroughly Hindu, Legend composed in Sanskrit, and is the germ which culminated in the Arabian Nights, and which inspired the "Golden Ass" of Apuleius, Boccacio's "Decamerone," the "Pentamerone," and all that class of facetious fictitious literature.

Vikram and The Vampire

Vikram and The Vampire
by Sir Richard R. Burton
Classic Hindu Tales of
Adventure, Magic, and Romance
Edited by his Wife
Isabel Burton

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