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Twenty Five Tales of the Vetala: Difference between revisions
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The ''[[wikipedia:Vetala Panchvimshati|Twenty Five Tales Of The Vetala]]'' is a Hindu legend, originally written down in Sanskrit in the 11th century CE but probably based on oral stories that are much older.▼
| title = Vetala Panchavimshati
| original title = वेतालपञ्चविंशति
| image = Vetal.jpg
| caption =
| author =
| central theme =
| elevator pitch = A collection of conundrums told by a spirit to a king.
| genre =
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}}
▲The ''[[wikipedia:Vetala Panchvimshati|Twenty Five Tales
The [[Framing Device]] is that of King Vikram, who is strong and kind but not all that wise. Every day, he sits in his throne room and sees various people. One person who comes every day is a random beggar who always offers the king a piece of fruit. Since a piece of fruit isn't that impressive a gift for a king, Vikram just hands the fruit over to his advisor and doesn't think about it at all. Then, one day, Vikram's pet [[Everything's Better with Monkeys|monkey]] steals the bit of fruit and throws it at the floor, breaking the skin. This reveals that inside the fruit was a jewel. Vikram immediately asks his advisor what he's been doing with the other bits of fruit, to which the advisor responds he's been throwing them into a random room and hasn't even bothered to look at them. Vikram goes to the room, and finds a lot of rotting bits of fruit on the floor, with a jewel inside every one.
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The vetala responds by flying back to the tree.
So happen the twenty-four tales of the vetala (the [[Framing Device]] being the twenty-fifth of the title). Each time Vikram gets [[Trickster Mentor|the vetala]] from the tree and tries to carry it to the sorceror, the vetala tells him a story with a confusing moral and flies all the way back to the tree. With each story, [[Character Development|Vikram gets wiser]]. The legend is believed by some to be the origin for the nested stories of the [[Arabian Nights]], and is quite well known in its native India
The specific tales told by the vetala differ depending on who is telling the story - [[The Other Wiki]] has [[w:List of Vetala Tales|a list]] - but almost always start with the tale described above, and consistently end with the tale of the father and son who marry a mother and daughter. There is a translation by an American Indologist named Arthur William Ryder [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2290/2290-h/2290-h.htm#intro on Project Gutenberg] that is quite accurate to the original. A book by comparative mythologist Heinrich Zimmer called ''[http://books.google.co.in/books?id=cRYJDuzjd44C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Heinrich+Zimmer&lr=&cd=1#v=onepage&q&f=false The King and the Corpse: Tales of the Soul's Conquest of Evil]'' deals with the psychological implications of the legend in some detail.
{{tropelist}}
* [[Dark Is Not Evil]]: While the sorceror is a dark evil force, the
* [[Hero's Journey]]: Vikram goes through it, with his ultimate boon in some translations being {{spoiler|a wise and successful king in life, and when he dies, he'll become even more powerful than all the gods. The ''Hindu'' gods}}.
* [[Obviously Evil]]: The sorceror, who Vikram trusts enough despite his plan being 'come to this creepy haunted place and lug around a corpse for my dark magic and I'll make it worth your while'.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Classic Literature]]
[[Category:Oral Tradition]]
[[Category:Literature]]
[[Category:Myth, Legend and Folklore]]
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