Vetāla 18: The Brahman’s Son who failed to acquire the Magic Power

Click the link to jump directly to the english translation of the eighteenth Vetāla. This page only contains the notes.

In the Hindi version^[1] the tale (No. 17) is considerably abbreviated. We get no details of the gambling at all. The Brāhman’s son, here called Guṇākar, is quite willing to eat any food the ascetic has to offer, until he sees it is prepared in a human skull. It is a Yakṣiṇī who produces the illusion of the palace. She stays with him during the night, and in the morning he wants to acquire possession of the Science. He is told that in order to do this he must sit at midnight in the middle of the water for forty days. This Guṇākar accomplishes, and is then told to do the same in fire. He gets leave to visit his family, but on returning completes the ordeal. As in our version, the object is not gained owing to instability of mind and intention.

In the Tamil version^[2] (No. 13) the tale is reduced to a mere précis, and the incidents are either omitted or so altered that the whole point of the story is lost. The Brāhman is represented as dying of hunger when a “devotee” rescues him by offering him rice, which he eats till he is satisfied. Then, without his even asking, the ascetic instructs him in magic. The Brāhman goes to bathe and sees a vision of a child standing before him. On finishing his bathe he returns to the ascetic and explains that the vision lasted only while his head was under the water. This completes the story. To the Vetāla’s question the king answers that such magical deeds can be accomplished only by those bent on bestowing charity to Brāhmans.

Apart from the obvious moral contained in our story, the only incident worth noticing^[3] is the illusion produced when immersed in water, both as to place and the passing of time.

When dealing with the “Change of Sex” motif in Vetāla 15, I quoted (p. 225) a story from the Nights in which a vizier plunges into a cauldron, and, in the few minutes that his head is covered by the water, imagines, by the power of illusion, that he has spent many years as a woman in a fisherman’s hut. In a note on p. 224 I mentioned that Lane heard a similar tale in Cairo. The tale in question concerned the means by which a certain Sultan, who scoffed at the story of the Mi‘rāj, or Ascension of Muhammed, was finally converted to the Faith. It was obviously an abbreviated account of the widely circulated tale which found its way into the Forty Vazīrs, and so appears in the collections of Pétis de la Croix^[4] and Cazotte and Chavis.^[5] It is of considerable interest as a later variant of our Indian original, particularly because of the use to which the motif has been put.

Before speaking of the possible origin of such illusions as to time and place I will give such portions of the tale as concern our inquiry. I borrow from Gibb’s translation of the Forty Vazīrs, p. 16 et seq.

The tale forms the First Vazīr’s story:

“One day the doctors of the law were assembled in the council of the King of Egypt and were talking over the details of the Ascension.

They said:

‘The Most Noble Apostle made the Ascension, and God Most High showed him the Seven Heavens, the Eight Paradises, and the Seven Hells, and spake with him ninety thousand words; and when he returned to his place he found his bed still warm, and the water had not wholly run out of an ewer which had been upset beside him, so he straightway raised the ewer from the ground.’

The King of Egypt marvelled thereat and said:

‘These words which ye speak are remote from reason: the depth of each of the Seven Heavens is a five-hundred-years’ journey, and the distance between each is a five-hundred-years’ journey, yet ye say that he traversed the Heavens, and the Eight Paradises, and the Seven Hells, and conversed to the extent of ninety thousand words and came back again and found his bed warm and his ewer not empty—that is remote from reason.’

Although they insisted with him that God Most High was almighty, it was in vain. When the assembly broke up, news of this reached Sheykh Shihāb-ud-Dīn.”

He hastened to the king’s presence, and through the power of illusion, by merely opening and shutting windows, displayed in turn an army, the city in flames, the Nile overflowing its banks, and a garden like unto Paradise.

The tale then continues:

“The sheykh let open again the shut windows, and nothing was visible. Then he bade bring a tub and fill it with water; and the king told them to obey, so they brought it.

The sheykh said:

‘O King, hold about thee a towel, and plunge once into this water, then come out and sit down, and I will show thee a wonder.’

Then the king held about him a towel and went into the tub and plunged in it, and when he put out his head he saw himself on the skirt of a trackless mountain by the seashore.

Then was the king bewildered, and he cried:

‘Dost thou see? The sheykh, he has by magic cast me into the desert and seized my throne!’

Thus thinking, he looked about and saw some persons cutting wood on the mountain.

He went up to them and saluted them, and they returned the salute, and asked:

‘What man art thou?’

The king said:

‘I am a merchant. The ship in which I was sank in the sea; I laid hold of a plank and was saved, and am come here.’

Then had they compassion on him, and each of them gave him some old garment, and they clothed him.

The king said to them:

‘Who are ye and whence are ye?’

They replied:

‘Behind this mountain is a city; we belong to it.’

Then the king went with them to that city, and while he was wandering through the bazaar he happened on the shop of an aged farrier.

The farrier said to him:

‘O youth, whence art thou come?’

And the king again declared that he was a merchant whose ship had sunk, and that he had managed to save himself; and he asked for advice.

The old man said:

‘As thou art a stranger, go sit at the door of the bath, and ask of every woman that comes out if she have a husband, and according to the custom of the city, whatsoever woman says to thee that she has no husband shall be thy wife.’

So the poor king went and sat at the door of the bath and asked the ladies that came out; but they each answered, ‘I have a husband,’ and went away.

Of a sudden a lady attended by several servants came out, and when he said to her, ‘Hast thou a husband?’ she replied, ‘No,’ and passed on. Afterward one of that lady’s servants returned and took the king and brought him to her.

She said,

‘By the command of God I am become thy wife’;

and the king was thankful for that event. He lived seven years with that lady and had two sons and a daughter.

At length all her means were used up and they had nothing left to eat, and the lady said to him:

‘O man, go earn something, that we and our children may live.’

Then the king was sad, and he went to the farrier and told him how things stood with him, and the farrier asked him if he knew any trade.

The king replied that he knew none, so the farrier put a few pence into his hand and said:

‘Go buy a rope and sit among the porters, and he whose load thou carriest will give thee two or three pence, and so thou shalt live.’

The king did as the farrier told him, and, having no other resource, was for some days a porter and carried loads. When he took up the loads the rope would cut his shoulders, and he would think on the estate he had enjoyed and weep. One day, while strolling along, he came upon the seashore. Now ablution had become necessary for the king, so he went into the water and plunged in it, and when he put his head out he beheld himself in his own palace, and the sheykh was sitting looking at him. . . ”

In a note at this point Gibb states that the trick of making one imagine that he has in a few seconds experienced adventures that seem to have lasted over a long period appears to have been a favourite one with the dervishes. Several instances of it occur in the tales of ‘Alī ‘Azīz that he has published under the title of The Story of Jewād (see, e.g., pp. 29, 30).

“It may have been effected,” says Gibb,

“by means of some intoxicating preparation like haṣīṣ.”

I believe that he has really hit upon the true origin of such tales, and consequently I have looked for descriptions of the effect of haṣīṣ which exhibit such phenomena as shown in our text.

In the second article, under the title of “Les Poisons de l’Intelligence,” Revue des Deux Mondes, March 1877, p. 816 et seq., M. Charles Richet deals with “Le Hachich—L’Opium —Le Café.”

In describing the effect of haṣīṣ he points out how completely all idea of place and time is lost:

“Le temps paraît d’une longueur démesurée. Entre deux idées nettement conçues, on croît en concevoir une infinité d’autres, mal déterminées et incomplètes, dont on a une conscience vague, mais qui remplissent d’admiration par leur nombre et leur étendue. Il semble done que ces idées sont innombrables, et, comme le temps n’est mesuré que par le souvenir des idées, le temps paraît prodigieusement long. Par example, imaginons, comme e’est le cas pour le hachich, que dans l’espace d’une seconde nous concevions cinquante pensées diffèrentes; comme en général pour concevoir cinquante pensées diffèrentes il faut plusieurs minutes, il nous semblera que plusieurs minutes se sont passées, et ce n’est qu’en faisant à l’inflexible horloge qui nous marque les heures la constatation régulière du temps écoulé que nous nous apercevrons de notre erreur. Avec le hachich, la notion du temps est complètement bouleversée, les secondes sont des années et les minutes des siècles. . . . ”

Everything seen tends to be extraordinarily exaggerated: an ordinary staircase appears as a flight of steps leading to the heavens, a small stream becomes a great sea, a single soldier is a mighty army, the slightest noise is like a crash of thunder. The senses of appreciation are strangely affected. Thus a discordant sound seems like celestial music, the most commonplace garden becomes a heavenly Nandana surpassing mortal description. Finally, as the effect of the drug loses its hold, if an overdose has not been taken, the memory is not impaired, and all the experiences seen and felt can be described in detail.

With regard to the drug making people insensible to heat, Burton notes (Nights, vol. iii, p.91n¹) its use among stokers. Herklots gives a description of the numerous preparations of the drug.^[6]

Doubtless an extensive bibliography could be made on haṣīṣ and its effects,^[7] but the above is quite sufficient for our purposes, as it shows beyond a doubt that the reports of haṣīṣ-takers are quite sufficient to give rise to a story such as we have been considering above.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Barker, op. cit., p. 285 et seq. On p. 290 the first line of the footnote translation is in its wrong place and should be moved to the same position on p. 289.

[2]:

Babington, op. cit., pp. 64, 65.

[3]:

I have already (Vol. II, pp.231n¹, 232 n) given a note on gambling to No. 29d, “Devadatta the Gambler,” which commences like the Vetāla’s 18th tale.

[4]:

Histoire de la Sultane de Perse, et des Visirs. Contes Turcs, Paris, 1707.

[5]:

Cabinet des Fées, vols, xxxviii-xli, Paris, 1788-1793.

[6]:

Qānūn-i-Islām, new edition, Crooke, 1921, p. 326 et seq.

[7]:

See Watt, Dictionary of the Economic Products of India, vol. ii, p. 103 et seq., and the numerous references given. The latest work on the subject I have seen is Jules Giraud, Testaments d’un Haschischéen, Paris [1913].