Vetāla 20: The Brāhman Boy who offered himself up to save the Life of the King

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

The Hindi version^[1] (No. 19) is more abbreviated than that in Somadeva, but certain incidents are fuller.

Thus the hermit, after reproving the king for indulging in the vice of hunting, quotes the following from the Dharma-śāstras as particularly applicable to the case in point:

“Austere devotion is not equal to a forgiving spirit, nor is pleasure so desirable as content, nor wealth as friendship, nor justice as mercy. He who is zealous in the discharge of his religious duties, and who has attained wealth, good qualities, knowledge, celebrity and influence, who knows no pride, is contented with his own wife, and is truthful, will obtain final emancipation and absorption; and he who slays devotees with matted hair, and those who are without clothing, and the inoffensive, will at death descend into hell. And the monarch who does not punish the oppressor of his people will also suffer the torments of Naraka. And he who has intercourse with a king’s wife, or his friend’s wife, or a maiden, or a woman in advanced pregnancy, will surely fall into the nethermost hell.”

The hermit marries his daughter to the king by the gāndharva form of marriage. The adventure with the demon occurs at midnight, and not on the following morning.

No reason at all is given as to why the demon is so angry, and he says immediately, “O King, I will devour thy wife!” and then continues,

“If thou wilt cut off with thine own hand the head of a Brāhman’s son of seven years of age, and give it me, I will not devour her.”

Neither the king himself nor his court is in any way implicated. The golden image is taken to the cross-roads, and on the third day a poor Brāhman decides to sacrifice one of his three sons. He discusses the matter with his wife: he will not give up the eldest, she will not sacrifice the youngest. The second son, hearing the argument, offers himself accordingly. There is nothing about the parents holding the boy down while he is killed. The important difference is that the boy first laughed and then cried.

But this appears to be a mistake, for the question of the Vetāla is merely: “Why did the boy laugh?”

The king’s reply is the same as in Somadeva.

In both the original recensions of Śivadāsa and the Tamil version the boy only laughs, and for exactly the same reason as in our present text.

The Tamil version^[2] (No. 21) has been reduced to a single page, and is devoid of all interest or importance.

The tale contains two distinct motifs, the first being that of “Self-Sacrifice” and the second the “Laugh.” With the first of these we are already well acquainted. It has always been a great factor in Buddhist legends, as we have seen from the story of Jīmūtavāhana. And is it not the foundation-stone on which the whole edifice of Christianity has been built? In the story of Vīravara (Vol. VI, p. 191 et seq.) we had another striking example of the motif, and my notes on pp. 272 and 273 of the same volume supplied many analogues.

Without discussing the subject further, we can at once pass on to the variant of our story found in Dr Behrnauer’s translation^[3] of the Dresden MS. of the Forty Vazīrs. Here we read of a king from whose foot issued a wasting sweat, for the cure of which no remedy could be found. The assembled physicians came to the conclusion that the only way to save him was for the body of an Indian boy to be split open, and the king’s foot thrust into the wound.

After the boy had been duly procured and was about to be split open, he began to laugh, and on being asked the reason, replied in a similar strain as in our text, but concluded with the following words:

“. . . Now, indeed, my parents sell me to the king, and he is about to kill me for the healing of his pain, so that thereby he may be delivered in this present life; but what will he say in that other world in his justification before the Majesty of the Most High? Now have I found no tenderness in my mother, nor any affection in my father, nor yet any justice or equity in the king; whom then shall I implore? I fly for refuge to that God who is an almighty Avenger: for all the injustice wrought against me, He will surely take me in charge, and cause to be bestowed on me my full right!”

At this the king was filled with fear and shame, and, releasing the boy, warm tears fell from his eyes. The physicians thereupon restored the king to health by rubbing his foot with the tears. No mention is made of fashioning a golden image in the likeness of the boy. In the Bengali version of the Vikrama-charita,^[4] however, a rich man makes a golden statue, offering it to anyone who is willing to sacrifice himself. Vikrama agrees, and cuts off his head, but is healed by the goddess.

We now come to the second motif in our story, that of the “Laugh.” Of all methods of expressing human feeling or emotion, often sudden and unexpected, none is so general as laughter.^[5] Certainly people weep for joy as well as for sorrow, but a laugh may be actuated by feelings of almost unlimited scope. The very act of laughing arouses curiosity in others, partly, I suppose, because of the personal nature of a laugh, and partly because it creates a feeling of inferiority that is only removed when the reason for the laugh is known. Some laughs are self-explanatory, but many are not, and it is here that the story-teller has seen a motif of the widest application and endless possibilities. He has not contented himself with the obvious use of laughter—making a character laugh for joy when we should expect him to laugh, or to give an ironical laugh when the situation makes its omission practically impossible. No, he is far cleverer than that; he makes his characters laugh, perhaps with joy, at a time when we would least expect it; and we, as we read, are genuinely anxious to know the cause of the laugh. The melodramatic villain’s “Ha! Ha!”, the nervous laugh of the heroine or of the persecuted, the triumphant laugh of the victor, the malicious laugh of the wrongdoer, and the hysterical laugh of the miserable, need no explanation or comment. They merely attest the manifold emotions which can be registered through the same medium.

In Hindu fiction I would divide laughs into two distinct varieties:

1. those which clearly show their nature, but not the reason which prompted them;
2. curious and mysterious laughs which give no clue either to their real nature or their significance.

Both varieties are dramatic, the second more than the first. It is, of course, the dramatic laugh that becomes such a force in the hands of the story-teller. It has been observed that, with but very few exceptions, all Biblical laughs are dramatic—usually of scorn or derision. The innocent laugh of joy would nearly always pass unheeded by the chronicler or historian, as it would lack the interest necessary to produce a dramatic situation.

Now, in the first category as suggested above would come the laugh in the story under discussion. It is quite clear that the laugh was a laugh of joy, but the point was why did the boy laugh when he was about to be killed? As we shall see later, when discussing the combined “Laugh and Cry” motif in Vetāla 23, it is much more usual for the laugh to show its nature, but not its incentive, when in combination with weeping.

We shall therefore confine ourselves here to a short consideration of the second category—the curious, enigmatic, mysterious laugh.

The first laugh we encountered in the Ocean was a most curious and uncanny laugh, without the least clue as to its significance—the laugh of the dead fish (Vol. I, p. 46). In my note on pp. “and 47 I added numerous variants of the laughing fish, and so need not add anything further here. In another place (Vol. V, p. 30) we had a strange paradoxical laugh caused by grief. This form, as Bloomfield has pointed out,^[6] is distinctly rare. The use of the enigmatic laugh to illustrate the unswerving laws of karma is well shown in a tale in the Jainistic Kathākoça (Tawney, p. 185 et seq.).

The Princess Madanamañjarī chanced to overhear certain of her father’s courtiers flattering him by saying that their luck in enjoying such a fortune of rule was due solely to the king, from whose favour it sprang. At this she laughed a little, and then remained silent.

The king asked his daughter the reason of her laughing, saying:

“My darling, what is this?”

His daughter answered:

“My father, these servants of yours said what is not true; for that reason I laughed.”

The king said:

“My dear, what is untrue?”

She answered:

“Their assertion that their happiness springs from your favour: that is untrue.”

The king asked his daughter:

“Then, my dear, what is true?”

She said:

“Every man fares according to his own actions.”

When the king heard this speech of his daughter in the audience hall he flew into a passion, and calling his ministers said this to them:

“Come, come! bring some poor leper afflicted with disease, and very wretched, as a fit bridegroom for my daughter, in order that this Madanamañjarī may be given to him, so that she may reap the fruit of her own actions.”

After some trouble the necessary leper was found, but Madanamañjarī, firmly believing that at the appointed time she would enjoy the fruit of her karma, was in no way perturbed. On the contrary, she seemed quite satisfied with her father’s choice, and behaved like a loving and dutiful wife, even offering to carry her diseased husband on her back wherever he might want to go. (See the Ocean, Vol. V, p. 155n².) She was duly rewarded by her husband, who turned out to be nothing less than a mighty Vidyādhara, and soon installed his faithful wife as his queen in a palace of purest gold. Needless to say, her father was at last convinced of the truth of his daughter’s original remark.

Another story concerned with the workings of fate occurs in Stokes’ Indian Fairy Tales, p. 114, where there is a triple sardonic laugh. A still more enigmatic laugh is that uttered by a corpse in the Prabandhacintāmaṇi.

A prince is out hunting at night, and, in aiming at a boar, chances to kneel on the corpse of a thief, that has fallen to the ground after impalement, whereupon the corpse cries out to him; but in no way perturbed, the prince shoots his arrow, kills the boar, and then turns to the corpse. At this it rises up and utters a loud laugh, at the same time granting boons to the intrepid prince. No explanation of the laugh is given, and its significance is left for the reader to decide. The subsequent adventures of the prince point to the laugh being one of admiration mixed with ironic glee at the thought of the subsequent adventures that were to happen to the prince (see Bloomfield, op. cit., p. 84).

In conclusion I would mention the laugh of trickery and deceit. We have an example of this in the story of “Ṭhiṇṭhākarāla, the Bold Gambler,” which occurs in Vol. IX, Chapter CXXI. Disguised as an ascetic he has gradually won the favour and respect of the king. On one occasion he remains for a long time in conversation with him. When the king is preparing to depart, a female jackal utters a yell, whereupon the sham ascetic laughs; and being persistently asked to explain the reason he tells the king that the jackal has told him that a pitcher of jewels is buried at a certain place. On going to the spot the king discovers this is true, and thus believes in the ascetic more than ever. Needless to say, the gambler had previously buried the pitcher himself.

For further “Trick” motifs see Bloomfield, op. cit., pp. 85,86. On the latter page he mentions a story from Shaikh Chilli’s Folktales of Hindustan, p. 124, in which a disguised robber takes service with an eloped couple, a prince and princess, the latter being disguised as a man. He treacherously kills the prince, but spares the princess on learning her sex. Shortly afterwards she laughs. The robber surlily asks her to keep quiet, and demands why she laughs.

She points to the sky, and says:

“Look up, look up, what a beautiful kite!”

When he looks up she cuts off his head.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Barker, op. cit., p. 311 et seq.

[2]:

Babington, op. cit., pp. 82-83. I fail to understand Bloomfield’s note in Journ. Amer. Orient. Soc., vol. xxxvi, p. 83, where he says the story occurs in no version except the Tamil.

[3]:

Die Vierzig Veziere oder Weisen Meister, ein altmorgenländischer Sittenroman aus dem Türkischen übertragen von Dr. Walter Fr. Adolf Behmauer, Leipzig, 1851. See also Gibb’s translation, p. 405, and Chauvin, op. cit., viii, p. 179, for several analogues.

[4]:

This version, usually known as the Vararuci Recension, is ignored by Edgerton in his Vikrama’s Adventures, as being secondary to the Jainistic Recension, and of no importance in the reconstruction of the original text. See Benfey, Pantschatantra, vol. i, p. 109.

[5]:

See, for instance, Thomas Hobbes, Humane Nature, Ldn., 1650, pp. 101-105; ditto, The Leviathan, Ldn., 1651, p. 27; H. Spencer, “The Physiology of Laughter,” Macmillans Magazine, March 1860, pp. 395-402 (reprinted in his Essays, vol. i, pp. 194-209); George Meredith, “On the Idea of Comedy,” New Quarterly Magazine, April 1877, pp. 1-40; A. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, vol. i, pp. 76-80, sect. 13; vol. ii, pp. 270-284; H. Bergson, Le Rire, Paris, 1924 (see Brereton and Rothwell’s trans. from the 1900 edition, Ldn., 1911); James Sully, An Essay on Laughter, Ldn., 1902; C. Lloyd Morgan, “Laughter,” Hastings’ Ency. Rel. Eth., vol. vii, pp. 803-805; and J. C. Gregory, The Nature of Laughter, Ldn., 1924.

[6]:

“On Recurring Psychic Motifs in Hindu Fiction, and the Laugh and Cry Motif,” Journ. Amer. Orient. Soc., vol. xxxvi, p.80n⁴⁷.