by Khaing
In India 2,500 years ago, a series of stories ‘The tales of Vikram and Betaal’ were written by Mahakavi Somdev Bhatt. The individual stories were told by a ghost character named Betaal Pachisi, to wise King Vikramaditya. This is the story of how they met and one of those stories the ghost told the king…there are many more.
King Vikramaditya ruled over a city on the banks of Godavari River. He was very famous for his bravery and courage. People loved him because he always gave justice.
One day a sage came to the court of Vikram and gave him a fruit. The king handed it over to his treasurer. Thereafter, the sage kept coming to the court daily to give a fruit to the king. The king could not understand the reason behind this behaviour. But he did not try to find out the sage’s intentions.
However, one morning, Vikram noticed a monkey sitting on the palace wall and gave the fruit to it. The monkey had started eating the fruit when suddenly a dazzling gem fell out of it. The King was amazed. He immediately ordered his treasurer to get him all the fruits kept in the storage. The fruits had gone bad but when the king had them crushed, each one of them yielded a precious gem.
The generous King donated all these gems to the poor and waited for the next visit of the sage. The next day, the sage came to Vikram’s court with yet another fruit. Vikram welcomed the sage and asked: “Your Holiness! Please tell me why you have been giving me such precious gifts? Without good reason, I cannot accept any more gifts from you.” The sage replied, “I need the help of a brave man for a spiritual goal. Will you help me?” Vikram readily agreed to this
A dodgy thing to agree without knowing what help was wanted… *smiles
So the sage said, “O King, please come to the burial ground on the next moonless night. It is at a distance of 20 miles from here. I will wait for you under a banyan tree.” Vikram agreed to follow the instructions. On the said night, Vikram covered his head and body with a black cloth and unnoticed, reached the appointed spot in the forest.
The sage was waiting for him and told him, “King Vikram! To the south of this forest is an old tamarind tree on which hangs a corpse upside down. Please bring it to me.” The king immediately followed the sage’s orders and reached the tamarind tree. On finding a corpse there, he cut it loose. As soon as the corpse fell to the ground, it laughed loudly with a cackling sound.
The king realised that it was a ghost. But the courageous king carried the body over his shoulders and started towards his capital. A short distance later, the ghost left Vikram’s shoulders and escaped to its original spot. The king climbed up the tree, brought down the ghost and placing it on his shoulders started walking again. “Who are you?” he asked the ghost. “I am Betaal” replied the ghost and in turn asked Vikram, “Why and where are you taking me away?” “A sage asked me to bring you to him,” replied Vikram.
Betaal did not have any objection to going with Vikram but he laid down a condition. “We have to cover a long distance and to relieve the tedious walk, I will tell you a story. But you should not utter even one word till we reach the destination. If by chance you utter anything, I will fly back to the tamarind tree. Do you agree to this?” asked Betaal. Vikram agreed to this and silently listened to Betaal’s story.
Bear in mind that 20 miles is a long walk for a king and a return 20 miles with a corpse on his back takes even more effort…
The story is called The Gatekeepers Reward
It was a dark night and was raining heavily and there were strange noises from everywhere and voice of the moaning of jackals could be heard. Although there was a bad atmosphere king Vikramaditya did not fear a bit. He climbed the tree to bring the corpse down and soon he began to walk with the corpse lying on his shoulder. The Betaal spoke: “O King , I pity you as you are making untiring efforts without relaxing as if you wish to achieve something. Instead of enjoying a comfortable sleep in your palace you came for me” King didn’t answer because any word from his mouth would let Betaal return to the tree.
So Betaal the ghost, started his story…
Once Upon a time there lived a king named Chandrakant. A very brave and kind king. He was taking good care of his subjects. Everyone was living with peace in his kingdom. Once a guard came to him and told him that “Your Highness! you must alert our soldiers, as our enemy might attack our country within few days”.
Chandrakant asked him how he could know this before the event happening. The guard didn’t reply. A few days passed. Suddenly the neighbouring country attacked Chandrakant’s Kingdom, but as his soldiers were alert, they fought bravely and defeated the enemy army. Chandrakant remembered the advice of the guard.
After the war was over, he returned to his palace. As he went to his bed, he decided to reward his guard on the next day. In the morning, he called the guard, who came very happily to receive his reward. The king gave him 1000 gold coins and asked him how he knew that enemies were going to attack the kingdom.
The guard replied “Sir I can foretell future events before they happen, as I see them in my dreams. That night while doing my duty guarding the palace, I had a dream about our enemy attacking us”. The king was pleased with him and gave him the 1000 gold coins. But then he said “You have done good work by alerting us, but you are dismissed from your post in the palace guard”.
People were shocked by the King’s decision, but no one dared to ask him why he had sacked the hero guard. The guard had simply said “Yes sir, I must be punished and went away”.
Now the ghost, Betaal stops storytelling and asks King Vikram: Why did the King dismiss the guard after he had helped him to win a victory over their enemy?
Vikram thought very carefully for a while, then replied: “Betaal, the duty of the guard was to protect the palace gate. As the guard said, he had a dream during the period of his duty. The king understood from this that the guard had been sleeping at the gate, so although he helped the king to victory over their enemy, hehad forgotten to do his duty, so king dismissed him from the post of palace guard.”
Betaal had trapped the king into talking, as he’d promised not to do.
As although the kind had been correct in reaching that conclusion, as soon as Vikram had finished this answer, Betaal disappeared back to the tamarind tree.
The poor king then had to walk 10 miles back to the tamarind tree to collect the corpse again.
You can imagine that what goes on between the king and the ghost is a series of other clever stories where the ghost traps the king into speaking again and again.