A Riddle-Loving Ghost Saves a King

Translated from the Sanskrit by Brishti Guha

 

King Trivikramasena—or Vikrama (brave) as everyone called him—ruled over Pratishthanpur a long time ago. His kingdom was prosperous, his reign just and impartial. His reputation was sky-high; in fact, the sky-goddess—the sun and the moon dangling in her ears—sometimes felt as if she were looking up at an invisible canopy of Vikrama’s fame.

An ascetic named Kshantisheel came to Vikrama’s court a number of times. During each visit, he would pay his respects and offer the king a piece of fruit. The king gave all these fruits to his treasurer. One day, the ascetic had just given Vikrama fruit, when a monkey snatched the fruit out of the king’s hands and dashed it to the ground. A costly jewel emerged from the fruit. Amazed, Vikrama had the treasurer bring all the fruits that the ascetic had given him: each contained a priceless jewel.

The king then asked Kshantisheel, “What do you hope to gain by giving me jewels which must cost the earth?”

The ascetic said, “Your Majesty, I have heard great things about your valor. I also hear that you are a friend to those in trouble, and that you’ll go to any lengths to help others. On the next new moon night, I plan to perform a ceremony in a cemetery. I would like you to assist me with it. I’ll give you directions: come and meet me there before midnight on the appointed night. You’ll find me at the foot of a banyan tree.” Vikrama agreed to his request.

The next new moon night, Vikrama set out for the cemetery to keep the appointment. Seated at the foot of a banyan tree, in a forest dark enough to frighten Death, the ascetic was naked save a garland of skulls around his neck. Assorted female spirits waited on him.

“Well, I’m here,” the king said, bowing. “What would you like me to do?”

The ascetic’s eyes sparkled with glee. “Your Majesty, I now know just how brave and patient you are. A mile south of here, you’ll find a rosewood tree with a corpse hanging from it. Bring me the corpse.”

Hearing this, the king lit a charcoal torch and ventured out into the black night. Soon enough, he saw a huge, dried up rosewood tree. The tree stood tall, as if puffed up by arrogance. It had no shadow, which spooked the king. It was out of joint, like a bad poem. He thought it looked more like a fierce ogre than like a tree. Then he saw the corpse, hanging down from the tree, its face distorted, and its thighs and feet distended. The king fancied that it belonged to a man who had turned away his face in shame, perhaps never having achieved anything or done good to anyone. He climbed the tree and cut the rope binding the corpse.

As soon as the corpse fell to the ground, it cried out in pain, “Hey! That hurt!” Thinking that the man must still be alive, the king climbed down speedily and began massaging the corpse’s limbs, cursing himself for his carelessness. This seemed to amuse the corpse, who laughed loudly. Just as the king was recovering from that shrill and piercing laugh, he noticed that the corpse had vanished. He looked up and found that it was again hanging from the tree, just as before, suspended from a rope! By now, the king had realized that a ghost inhabited this corpse. He climbed the tree again, hoisted the corpse—with the ghost—onto his shoulder, and marched off briskly.

The ghost liked to talk. “A trip without a story is boring,” he said, and proceeded to tell Vikrama a story, at the end of which he asked the king a riddle. “I should make it clear that if you know the answer but don’t tell, your head will split into a hundred pieces. If you do answer correctly, though, I’ll fly back to the rosewood tree. Choose wisely!” When the king answered correctly, the ghost flew back to his original position and hung upside down from the rosewood tree. Vikrama had to go back again and repeat the exercise. After this had happened twenty-three times—the king being good at answering riddles—it began feeling like a very long night, indeed.

As Vikrama hoisted the corpse onto his shoulder and set off for the twenty-fourth time that night, the ghost began narrating a new story.

“A powerful king, Dheeman by name, ruled the southern dominions. Vanquished by a foe, he was on the run, with his wife, Chandravati, and their daughter, Lavanyavati. Both mother and daughter were as lovely as moonlight. The long journey had tired out the whole family, and their progress was slow. They were negotiating their way through a massive forest, when they reached a part of the woods frequented by hunters. There, a band of huntsmen—clad in elephant hide, their headbands decorated with peacock tail feathers, their bodies smeared with elephant ichor—surrounded the king. Greedy for the jewels he carried, a number of them attacked him at the same time and killed him.

Luckily, the two women managed to flee to safety—trembling with fear, like does escaping predatory lions. The beautiful queen and her blue-eyed daughter entered a peaceful thicket overhung with creepers and found themselves a resting place by the side of a lake blooming with lotuses.

Meanwhile, a warrior named Chandasimha came to the woods to hunt deer. His son was with him. The two men noticed two pairs of women’s footprints on the path before them. ‘Look,’ said the father to the son. ‘There are clearly two different women—one with small feet, and one whose feet are bigger. If we meet these two women, I guess the one with the bigger feet will suit me. You can court the one with tiny feet.’

The father and the son did come across the two beauties, and hearing what had happened to them, took them home with them. Soon enough, they paired up. Remembering their compact, the father ended up with the princess Lavanyavati—who had large feet—while his son married the queen, Chandravati, who turned out to have tiny feet. In the course of time, both couples had children.”

Having narrated this story, the ghost asked Vikrama, “How are the children of these two couples related to each other?”

For the first time, Vikrama was silent: he didn’t know the answer. Mightily satisfied, the ghost seemed inclined to praise him. “Your Majesty, I am beyond impressed by your perseverance and your intelligence. So, I’ll tell you something that will save your life. That ascetic Kshantisheel is treacherous: he’s planning to offer you in sacrifice during the ghost-summoning ceremony he’ll conduct tonight. When you reach the cemetery, he’ll ask you to prostrate yourself on the ground. If he does, you must say, gently but firmly, ‘I’m a king, so I’m used to have others do obeisance to me; I don’t know how to prostrate myself to offer prayers. Please show me how it’s done.’ When he bends down to show you, you must behead him with your sword. Unless you do this, he’ll kill you. He wants to obtain mastery over the sorcerers of the world; and to that end, he wants to offer up your flesh. Now, I pray that all goes well with you; I must be off.”

With that, the ghost came out of the corpse; the king could no longer see it. Vikrama, his eyes brimming with excitement, then carried the corpse to the ascetic. Overjoyed, the wicked ascetic welcomed Vikrama. He had constructed an altar liberally sprinkled with white ash. On the altar were vessels filled with human blood. Lamps, their wicks fed by fat from carcasses, lit the scene. Kshantisheel then lifted the corpse off Vikrama’s shoulders. Placing it in the middle of the altar, he went around it counterclockwise, and chanting some charms, offered up some of the human blood. This had the effect of summoning the ghost back into the corpse. At this juncture, the ascetic asked the king to prostrate himself. Recalling the ghost’s instructions, the king pleaded ignorance of the etiquette and asked the ascetic to show him how to do it. When Kshantisheel bowed down, Vikrama whipped his sword out and beheaded him—to the delight of all the ghosts whom the evil ascetic had planned to press into his service. The ghost who had originally befriended Vikrama congratulated him and celebrated by showering him with flowers. The three major gods all appeared to confer blessings on Vikrama and promised him lordship over the world community of sorcerers—the very power that the ascetic had sought.

As for the riddle-loving ghost, he and Vikrama made a compact, one which they kept through the king’s entire lifetime. The ghost would appear whenever the king needed him. Sometimes, it was for help in an emergency. At other times, the king was bored and in the mood for a new story. In return, the king published all the stories the ghost had told him that fateful night, ensuring the ghost a lasting place in the storytellers’ hall of fame.

 

 

Translator’s note: This piece is a part of a popular cycle of ancient Sanskrit tales about a brave and wise king, Vikrama, and his encounters with a ghost who loved to tell stories and pose riddles. These tales appear in at least three distinct versions in Sanskrit literature. My translation is based on the “Brihatkathamanjari,” an eleventh century Sanskrit novel in verse by Kshemendra, a polymath from Kashmir, in northern India. Kshemendra, in turn, had based his novel on a lost manuscript called “Brihatkatha” (meaning “Huge Story”), attributed to Gunadhya and dated to the first century BC. I have also changed the end of the story slightly from the Brihatkathamanjari version, to one in line with an overlapping cycle of ancient Sanskrit stories called the “Dvatrimshat-puttalika” (Thirty two statuettes) written around the same time (attributed to Vararuci) and involving the same characters.

 

Translator

Brishti Guha has a PhD from Princeton and is an associate professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. She is an economist in love with literature. Besides publishing academic articles in international economics journals and sometimes writing for the popular press, she has published (or has work forthcoming) in Samovar, Sci-Phi Journal, New Myths, Eye to the Telescope, Chrome Baby, and elsewhere.