Vikram and the Vampire: Or Tales of Hindu Devilry by Richard F. Burton

Author:Richard F. Burton
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Tales -- India, Vampires -- India -- Folklore, Hindus -- Folklore
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2022-06-11T19:48:27+00:00

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The Vam­pire lost no time in open­ing a fresh story.

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.

This Raja, like most oth­ers of his semi-dei­fied or­der, had been in youth what is called a Sarva-rasi;95 that is, he ate and drank and listened to mu­sic, and looked at dan­cers and made love much more than he stud­ied, re­flec­ted, prayed, or con­versed with the wise. After the age of thirty he began to re­form, and he brought such zeal to the good cause, that in an in­cred­ibly short space of time he came to be ac­coun­ted and quoted as the par­agon of cor­rect Ra­jas. This was very praise­worthy. Many of Brahma’s vice­ger­ents on earth, be it ob­served, have loved food and drink, and mu­sic and dan­cing, and the wor­ship of Kama, to the end of their days.

Amongst his of­ficers was Gun­shank­ar, a ma­gis­trate of po­lice, who, curi­ous to say, was as hon­est as he was just. He ad­min­istered equity with as much care be­fore as after din­ner; he took no bribes even in the mat­ter of ad­van­cing his fam­ily; he was rather mer­ci­ful than oth­er­wise to the poor, and he nev­er pun­ished the rich os­ten­ta­tiously, in or­der to dis­play his and his law’s dis­respect for per­sons. Be­sides which, when sit­ting on the car­pet of justice, he did not, as some Kot­w­als do, use rough or angry lan­guage to those who can­not reply; nor did he take of­fence when none was in­ten­ded.

All the people of the city Chandrodaya, in the province of Malaya, on the west­ern coast of Bhar­atland, loved and es­teemed this ex­cel­lent ma­gis­trate; which did not, how­ever, pre­vent thefts be­ing com­mit­ted so fre­quently, and so reg­u­larly, that no one felt his prop­erty se­cure. At last the mer­chants who had suffered most from these de­pred­a­tions went in a body be­fore Gun­shank­ar, and said to him:

“O flower of the law! rob­bers have ex­er­cised great tyranny upon us, so great in­deed that we can no longer stay in this city.”

Then the ma­gis­trate replied, “What has happened, has happened. But in fu­ture you shall be free from an­noy­ance. I will make due pre­par­a­tion for these thieves.”

Thus say­ing Gun­shank­ar called to­geth­er his vari­ous del­eg­ates, and dir­ec­ted them to in­crease the num­ber of their people. He poin­ted out to them how they should keep watch by night; be­sides which he ordered them to open re­gisters of all ar­rivals and de­par­tures, to make them­selves ac­quain­ted by means of spies with the move­ments of every sus­pec­ted per­son in the city, and to raise a body of pag­gis (track­ers), who could fol­low the foot­prints of thieves even when they wore thiev­ing shoes,96 till they came up with and ar­res­ted them. And lastly, he gave the patrols full power, whenev­er they might catch a rob­ber in the act, to slay him without ask­ing ques­tions.

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