Vikram and Vaitaal Stories From Other Sources - Introduction

These stories have been taken from other sources, such as Internet sites, other books etc. Our purpose to keep them here is not to copy them here, but to keep all Vaitaal stories at one place without losing them, as it is very common with Internet sites that they can disappear without any warning. This site http://members.tripod.com/~srinivasp/mythology/betaal.html has listed 6 stories in all.

On 9/19/2010
I am sorry the above site has disappeared from the Internet, as I believe, so these stories cannot be verified there. That is why I have removed the link from that site.

Introduction

Once upon a time there lived a great king in Pratishthaanpur situated on the banks of Godaavaree River. His name was King Vikramaaditya. He used to sit in his court daily. A beggar used to come daily and offer a fruit to the king. But the king did not eat it and give it to his treasurer. Treasurer also did not throw it and kept it in a storage place. The beggar continued to bring the fruit and the king handed it over to his treasurer, and the treasurer kept it in the storage. Once Vikram got curious about those fruits, so he asked his treasurer to check on those fruits. The treasurer went to the storage place. He was surprised to see what he saw there, that all the fruits have disintegrated and there are emeralds and pearls scattered all around. He told this to the King and the King also got surprised to know this.

When the beggar came  next day, the King asked him about this. He said - "I am performing some magic spell and I need your help." Then he asked the King to come to cremation ground after the evening on the 14th of the dark fortnight. Vikram reached there on time and he found the beggar there. The beggar asked him to bring a corpse which was hanging upside down from a tree at some distance in deep woods. Vikram went there, found the corpse and as he took it off the tree to take it to the beggar, he realized that it was possessed by a vampire. Still he took it off the tree, kept on his shoulder and walked down the path to the cremation ground.

But whenever Vikram spoke on the way, the corpse got off from the shoulder of Vikarm and jumped back to the tree and Vikram had to go back to bring it again. The vampire used to tell him a story as he walked on. At the end of the story, he asked Vikram a question related to that story, but as he answered the question, that vampire jumped from his shoulder back to the tree because Vikram had to take him silently and Vikram could not remain silent at the question, because he knew the answer of that question. It was that vampire's condition that if Vikram did not answer his question in spite of knowing its answer, his head will be split in hundreds of pieces. This happened 24 times. The 25th time, in the end, when the vampire was telling him his story and Vikram really could not answer his question, he kept quiet and took it off silently and walked away.

These 25 stories are famous in Indian literature as Vikram-Vaitaal tales. After the 25th story, Vaitaal asked him to rest on a piece of wood when he would be sacrificed. In that situation, Vaitaal asked Vikram to get rid of the beggar. Vikram did so and Vaitaal granted him a boon. Vikram asked him to let these stories be famous for long time. Wherever these stories are told, vampires do not dare to come, hence the Vikram-Vaitaal stories.

Stories
1. Three Suitors
2. The Exchanged Heads
3, Three Special Braahman
4. Three Sensitive Queens
5. Four Boys Who Made a Lion
6. The Real Criminal