The Five and Twenty Tales of the Genie (Penguin Classics)

by Sivadasa

  Next in importance is the frame story itself, where the text proclaims the ideal of kingship implicit in the description of Vikramāditya, who as legend and tradition claimed, was the ideal monarch. (In Jambhaladatta’s text the description is perfunctory and nondescript.) This long passage describing the fabled emperor on his lion-throne (p.13) ought not to be dismissed as a passage of flowery verse cast in a conventional mode of description. It has a purpose, Śivadāsa is here using theories of the divine origin of kings propounded in treatises on the Law (Dharma Śastras), that characterize the king as compounded of portions of all the gods (Manusmṛti 7.1-8). That inheritance is what makes kingship legitimate on earth and gives a king the right to rule. This is an ancient concept. The most important of a king’s many virtues are couched in the following lines in the Śivadāsa narrative: ‘… like the noble ocean / never o’erstepping the bounds set by the Law / ever honoured by the wise and virtuous’; and the concluding lines of this passage are of special importance.

  The due care and protection of the good,

  as well the curbing of the evildoer,

  this was the highest duty and happiness

  of this king in this world and the other.

  These lines ought to be linked to the climactic act in the epilogue, the ritual killing of Kṣāntiśīla.

  We might note in passing that the father of the hero, King Gandharvasena, is far from being an ideal monarch.

  Vikramāditya, on the other hand, is set up right at the beginning in the opening of the frame story as an ideal monarch. However, Śivadāsa follows this initial statement of an ideal with the actual encounter of king and yogi; and here he lays out the problems of the role of the ideal ruler, as he shows the conduct of Vikramāditya, a wise and just ruler, being caught between conflicting imperatives. A ruler has to balance the often contrary demands of private and public good, of personal honour and the well-being and security of the state and the people. These are difficult decisions for any one holding the highest offices in a state at any time, including our own. Śivadāsa first makes use of the episode of the yogi bringing the king a gift of bilva fruit to make his point. When is a gift not simply a gift but a bribe or temptation?

  The king is offered certain gifts. He has to accept them; he cannot refuse. The yogi has laid his plans very cleverly. Up to the moment of discovery that the fruits contained gems there was a proper exercise of mutual courtesies that was part of Indian social custom. The guest brings fruit, the host offers the guest a seat and the traditional welcome with paan and supari. Now the situation has changed with Vikramāditya seated on the lion-throne and a heap of gems blazing at his feet. He is amazed, even dazzled by the richness of the gift. Feeling much beholden he wishes to make some recompense. How is he to act? The yogi now seizes his opportunity and is ready to make his request. But he is adamant that it has to be made in strict sécrecy. Normally, it is the king-in-council, that is the ruler in the presence of his ministers (the cabinet) who meets suppliants, hears petitions, grants requests and so on. The treatises on statecraft lay down such guidelines. But Vikramāditya agrees to the yogi’s condition. We might question the wisdom of granting a private interview to a suppliant without checking his credentials. In Tale 4, in Śivadāsa’s text, Vīravara, a suppliant seeking the king’s employment is interviewed in the Audience Hall, in the presence of the full Assembly, the Sabhā. Yet, day after day, for years, the yogi comes with a gift of bilva fruit, and the king pays no attention to this somewhat strange conduct.

  Spies are the eyes and ears of a king, but the king makes no use of them. And further, without any scrutiny of a suppliant who comes from nowhere with untold treasures as gifts, and demands to be heard in private, Vikramāditya agrees. It is a strange request that he hears. Unquestioning, without the least hesitation and without the aid of ministerial counsel, he accedes to the request. On the other hand, as a king and as a man he could not refuse the one thing that the suppliant asks for in return for the fabulous gifts he has made which appears to be something quite innocuous. Or is it? Granted that he was unaware of the true nature of the yogi’s request and what was involved in it, yet it must be pointed out that Kṣāntiśīla, the yogi, clearly spells out what his request for the king’s help is all about. It is to gain the eight great Siddhis:

  To be minute as an atom, or enormous as a mountain,

  light as air or heavy as rock; to be invisible at will,

  to have all one’s desires fulfilled, to subject others to one’s will;

  and to have lordship of the world.

  But this is asking for a great deal. Īśatvam (in line 4) is supremacy, mastery. And the ‘rites’, mantrasādhanam, the term used in the text sounds a bit dubious. Mantra signifies holy prayers, spells, incantations. It is possible that holy prayers can be performed even in the cremation grounds. Śiva, the world’s supreme yogi and ascetic is associated with the burning grounds, symbolically and metaphysically. Still, there is a bad odour to the whole affair, and Vikramāditya being a very learned and wise monarch should have been alerted to something not quite right in the situation. The truth is that he does not suspect the yogi, and a king ought not to be too trusting. He makes a rash promise and decides to help the yogi without any scrutiny of the letter’s credentials. In myth, King Bali made a rash promise to Viṣṇu who came as a suppliant in the form of a dwarf, asking for land that just three of his tiny steps would cover; and for his magnanimity, he lost everything being pushed by Viṣṇu, who had assumed his cosmic form, into the underworld. And Vikramāditya being a very learned monarch would have known all the myths and their meanings. Further, a decision arrived at without proper scrutiny is not the right one. Vikramāditya himself says this, and quite rightly in his answer to the vetāla’s question at the end of Tale I. Yet as he is facing Kṣāntiśīla, he does not apply this important dictum that should direct the decision-making of monarchs and men in high office, to his own case. Was he so dazzled by the richness of the yogi’s gift that it clouded his judgement?

  At this point, attention ought to be paid to the verses (on p.31) that are placed immediately before the vetāla asks his question at the end of Tale I:

  Without vigilant scrutiny act not,

  act only after full investigation,

  lest you reap the fruit of bitter remorse…

  and,

  Whatever deed Destiny has willed,

  that deed will be as it has been willed;

  even the gods cannot change what has been willed; and finally we read this:

  At a time when catastrophe is poised to strike,

  a man’s judgement forsakes him, as a rule,

  even if he is virtuous and wise.

  Śivadāsa has a purpose in the sententiaea, the gnomic verses that he introduces and the point at which he places them. They are guide posts to the reader. The lines quoted above apply to the king Dantaghāṭa in Tale I. But it also reflects on the other king, the hero, Vikramāditya. The first line in this passage that says ‘if an artifice is really well-concealed’, even the Creator will not find it out, also reflects on the events in the frame story. ‘Well-concealed’ gems are the beginning of Vikramāditya’s problems; they are the necromancing evil yogi’s ‘artifice’. One other point to be noted in this passage is that Śivadāsa prefaces it with the words, ‘As we have heard’. He has set down two different points of view of events that happen in a person’s life, that events are pre-ordained and unalterable and that a person has to be vigilant and act; a person has the freedom of choice: it is a matter of Free Will versus Fate. But Śivadāsa disclaims responsibility for both views. He simply states them as two alternate views. There is no authorial comment; no judgement made. The reader is not required to pass judgement either, but to think of each problem that Vikramāditya faces from several points of view.

  It is through such skilful use of language and structuring, and by his choice of a literary form, the champu, that Śivadāsa shows the reader ways of reading the text. The cha
mpu with its blend of verse and prose, each with its distinctive role, enables him to do this. The verse sets the tone and provides an indirect gloss for the narrative in prose. And by employing formulaic expressions such as As it is said’, or ‘As we have heard’, so characteristic of oral storytelling, he avoids imposing authorial constraints of interpretation. At the same time he sets forth different points of view and presents the hero in a dilemma.

  An important example of the dilemma that the hero finds himself in, is the situation that obtains in the cremation grounds, when Vikramāditya walks back and forth carrying the corpse, and this will be examined when the significance of the question-answer format at the end of each tale is discussed.

  Towards the end of the text after the necromancer, Kṣāntiśīla, has been decapitated and offered as a sacrifice to the vetāla, Śivadāsa places this verse, again not in his own person but distancing himself from the view expressed in it with the phrase, ‘And it is also said:

  Pay a man back in his own coin;

  do harm unto him who has done harm to you;

  I see no harm in that;

  adopt foul means towards an evil man.

  The placement of this verse at this point raises questions. The idea implied in this verse is one of revenge, not justice. A king dispenses justice and orders punishment. ‘Foul means’ are used in private revenge, in vendettas. Why is this verse placed here? Where is the need for a defensive statement even if it is not articulated by the author in his own person, when it is followed by the prose passage pointing out that Vikramāditya’s slaying of the evil necromancer is blessed by ‘the Gandharvas in the World of Light’ raining flowers on earth, the moon raising ‘excellent cries of victory’ to the king and the celestials proclaiming the rightness of his action and offering him a boon? And why is the descent of the Trinity, to bless Vikramāditya and Śiva’s special declaration that he was a portion of Śiva’s own power and effulgence, distanced by a short prose passage from the previous acclamation of the hero by the Gandharvas, the moon and ‘the celestials’, meaning Indra and his host of Devas, the Immortals? After Vikramāditya has stated his wish which we presume is granted, that the work the Vetāla Tales now concluded be ‘celebrated and gain renown’ and that he himself be granted the services of the vetāla, the text continues, with a verse beginning with the word then, (emphasis mine) Brahmā-Visnu-śiva descend manifest on earth and bow down to him. Śiva declares that the hero, known as Vikramasena and Vikramāditya is really a portion of the Effulgence, Śiva himself, born on earth. The narrative concludes with the promise of Vikramāditya’s glorious future as Lord of the Vidyādharas, who are not of this earth, and whose kingdom is not on this earth. The first benediction assures the hero of earthly sovereignty and power, the second of sovereignty in the future in another sphere of existence.

  Śivadāsa appears to deem this proclamation of the hero’s divinity necessary at this point, because nothing like this is to be found in the Jambhaladatta text. It sets the reader wondering if Śivadāsa is troubled by the act of shedding blood, once again, even though this time the act is sanctified by being made into one of ritual sacrifice. And going back to what was said about the verse about foul means and paying a man back in his own coin, it seems more certain that Śivadāsa is troubled. By being troubled himself he directs the reader to wonder about ritual slaying and the concept of blood paying for blood. Not that this is not an idea strongly entertained in our own world, today. Capital punishment, the donning of the mantle of patriotism to justify the shedding of blood innocent or otherwise, the just war, these are all no different in essence from the ritual slaying of Kṣāntiśīla by Vikramāditya. They are only deadlier. Śivadāsa is directing the reader’s attention to this problematic issue and by doing so he makes his concerns relevant in our own day and age.

  The sombre tone set by the preamble and frame story is largely responsible for the questioning and uncertainties roused by the text in readers’ minds. We now turn to these two stories and examine them in some depth.

  IV

  King Gandharvasena causes mortal offence to an unoffending anchorite, Valkalāśana (literally, one who eats bark) who has been performing penance in utter solitude in the deep woods for a thousand years, absorbed in silent meditation; for such are the vows that he has undertaken. The king construes the ascetic’s impregnable silence as an insult to his royal dignity and pays a harlot to seduce the ascetic (a classic motif in Indian literature). The son born to the fallen ascetic and the fallen woman (the harlot) dies a gruesome death at the hands of the enraged father who realizes when he is in the presence of the king that he has been tricked into losing the fruits of his penance for no reason other than the whim of an arrogant monarch. The ascetic picks up his infant son by the legs, whirls him around and dashes his little body on the floor in the royal Audience Hall. The child is dismembered. The three fragments that the body breaks into fall in three different places: the head in the palace, the trunk in a potter’s house and the feet in an oil merchant’s. A strange happening indeed. But stranger still is what follows this extraordinary event. The queen and the wives of the oil merchant and potter conceive that very day and at full term, each woman gives birth to a little boy at one and the same moment. They are therefore born under the same zodiacal sign and have identical natal charts. A bizarre relationship is established; a macabre blood bond apparently unites a dead and dismembered male child and three other male infants born to three different mothers, and presumably to three different fathers. Or, are they born to different fathers? Are the three infants brothers? Who is their real father? Do they all share the ascetic Valkalāśana’s blood? (In ancient thought blood and semen are the same.) One last question in our Vetāla-like series of questions: Does the triple fragmentation of the slain child suggest the triple division of the body-politic? And/or a symbolic representation of the three aspects of personality? A fractured personality to be integrated and made whole? Is the text suggesting that the three orders in the body-politic, Ksatriya (the prince), Vaiśya or trader (the oil merchant), Śudra or artisan (the potter), the three ‘brothers’ work together for the good of all. But that does not happen.

  The text seems to be suggesting a number of ways in which to perceive the fragmentation of the infant. The suggestions are tantalizing and elusive. But interestingly enough, the third ‘brother’, the oil merchant’s son who is innocent and inoffensive but unconscionably sinned against, is in the end the unwitting means to accomplish justice, contain evil and restore order. There is a strong implication in the text that the genie, or the vetāla who speaks out of the mouth of the corpse is the restless spirit of this third ‘brother’. The common belief even to this day, especially in rural communities is, that the ātmā (spirit) of a person dying a violent and unnatural death, either through murder or suicide, wanders, hovering in an in-between world that is neither the world, nor the hereafter, finding no peace. The text does not say this is so many words, but suggests that the murdered man, now a mere disgusting shell and voiceless, is given a voice by the genie. It is also a common belief that the ātmā of persons dying through violence haunt the spot where the deed was committed, be it murder or suicide.

  The dismemberment of the ascetic’s little son presents a strange situation where birth, death, blood and fragmentation of the whole exist in an unholy alliance. The riddle of the births of this ‘fraternity’ as the consequence of the death of another infant, and the questions that rise in the reader’s mind like spectres are a kind of grim parody of the riddles posed and the questions asked repeatedly by the genie. Attention ought to be specially drawn to Tale 18, ‘Who is Prince Haridatta’s Real Father?’ There are three possible fathers, the thief, the gallant (the biological father), the king (the foster parent). Vikramāditya’s answer is that the thief is the real father, because he is the legal parent. Even as he was dying impaled on the stake, the thief had legally married the future mother of Haridatta, though she was but a child herself at the time.
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  The strange bond between the sons of the king, the potter and the oil merchant—Vikramāditya, Kṣāntiśīla, and the Vetāla (who is the real son of the oil merchant)—is established as the result of a chance encounter of king and ascetic (Gandharvasena and Valkalāśana). The chance encounter leads to wrongdoing on the part of both men, one flowing from inordinate pride and lack of judgement—both serious flaws in a monarch—and the other through uncontrolled lust and anger, both unpardonable flaws in an ascetic practising penance for a thousand years in the hope of gaining everlasting life in the realms of Light, Brahmaloka.

  To further complicate the strangeness of the situation, a prophecy is made at the time of the triple births, that one of the infants will slay the other two and become the paramount ruler of the earth. Again, questions rise in the reader’s mind; a second set of questions that parallel the genie’s questions at the end of each tale. Who should rule? According to the principle of hierarchy, the prince should rule. By birth and opportunity and because the head of the dismembered infant fell in the palace, his is the right. The head is the prime member of the body as Vikramāditya declares to the genie at the close of Tale 6—‘Of the Young Bride Who Switched Heads’ : ‘of all the body parts/the head is pre-eminent’. But it seems that the trunk puts in its own claim. The potter’s son, evil by nature and consumed by ambition holds that the man who dares and reaches out to seize the crown should be king. And he makes his plans accordingly, in secret. He interprets the prophecy to suit his interests, foully murders the oil merchant’s son, escapes the king’s justice, spends years learning the arts of magic and hatches his plan to kill the king by offering him as a blood sacrifice to obtain the eight Siddhis which would assure him of unbounded power, dominion and immortality.