In this episode, we’re back to the Singhasan Battisi. The Singhasan Battisi is a series of 32 stories, all featuring the throne of King Vikramaditya. By the way, Singhasan Battisi literally means 32 of the Throne. In this case, the 32 things they are referring to are stories. Or maybe storytellers, because each of the 32 stories are told by a different storyteller.
So far, we’ve done a couple of Singhasan Battisi episodes. The first was Episode 124, which had the framing narrative and we did one of the stories in Episode 136. We’ll recap the framing story briefly and then cover another of the 32 stories.
The story began with a different King. Raja Bhoj. Bhoj ruled his little Kingdom several centuries after Vikramaditya had passed on. Vikramaditya himself was rather popular. Thanks to the Vikram and Betaal stories, and a bunch of other stories that prominently featured the King. We have covered many of the Vikram and Betaal stories before and you’ll find links to those as well in the show notes and the site sfipodcast.com.
Vikramaditya’s throne was an artifact lost in time. The throne was a gift from Indra, the King of the Devs, and the ruler of Swarg, or heaven. The throne held a similar sort of value to the way modern civilization attributes to the Holy Grail or the Lost Ark of the Covenant.
The person who found Vikramaditya’s throne was neither Indiana Jones, nor Lara Croft. It wasn’t Bhoj either. It was an ordinary farmer. Bhoj observed the farmer and how his sudden change of behavior when in the vicinity of a particular hill. Bhoj had this strange mind-altering hill dug up. And that’s when he discovered the Throne.
Bhoj had been a very average King so far. This was his chance to become special. Maybe by sitting on Vikramaditya’s throne, he thought he might inherit some of the powers and become a famous king, perhaps even more famous than Vik.
The opportunity came begging, in the form of this Throne! His people cleaned the throne and prepared it for him. And because they couldn’t find a way to displace the Throne they built an entire palace around it. Even average Kings were rich, so bankrolling a new palace was not a problem.
Bhoj’s architects and designers had done a splendid job. They even had 32 stairs leading up to the throne itself, to match the 32 idols on the sides of the Throne.
When Bhoj took a step towards the throne, something very surprising happened.
One of the idols flew out of its spot. It hovered near Bhoj and challenged him. He could sit on the throne, but only if he felt worthy of it.
The idol spoke to him in the melodious voice of an Apsara. It told him a story. And asked him a True/False question
Bhoj needed to provide a sincere reply. That was absolutely necessary. She had an Artificial Intelligence powered lie detection module, so she would know if he was telling the truth.
The idol asked a story, Bhoj answered and the idol flew away because his proposed solution to the story didn’t exactly match Vik’s. The throne looked just as pretty with 31 idols instead of 32, so he didn’t worry. But then the same thing with the next idol and so on and so forth.
Today we’ll hear one such story.
“I’m Apsara number 2” said Apsara number 2 after first clearing her throat to announce her presence. Bhoj seemed rather preoccupied after listening to the first story.
“What? Number 2 you said?” asked Bhoj narrowing his eyes suspiciously. “You don’t mean to say you have another story for me?”
“I do!” said the Apsara. “And because I’m not the very first Apsara, I won’t need to repeat any instructions. Just hear me out, and tell me whether or not you would do the same thing as Vik if you were in his position”
Bhoj gleamed triumphantly. He had got her there! “If I were in Vik’s position, I couldn’t say or do anything. Vik’s been dead a few centuries now”
“I meant in the story. Now if you’re done with your frivolous interruptions, may I please continue my story?”
Bhoj shuffled his feet in embarrassment.
“Once upon a time” began the Apsara as the screen began to fade.
There was a convention for Devas. They were having a bit of a party in Swarg, or heaven.
These Swarg parties were the hottest thing amongst the gods. And not just because the Sun god, Surya was in their midst. He didn’t miss a party. And the other guests were always coming to him to add a little flame to their drinks. And he couldn’t resist the urge to bask in popularity. Agni, the real god of fire, was a little hurt.
Varuna had a similar effect. He was the god of the seas. And the lesser Devas were always begging him to craft elaborate fountains for them. And Narada was there at the party too.
The Apsara hit the pause button at this point. She told Bhoj – “it’s totally not weird that Narada’s in this story while also being the narrator of the story you and I feature in”. She hit the play button again and the party in Swarg continued.
In the advanced stages of the party, when the rank and file Devs departed, the ones that were left behind were the usual laggards.
Vayu was loudly bragging about how he broke the speed record. Again, “and I whooshed down the mountainside, and I was totally like this is a rollercoaster, man”
“He totally did,” confirmed Narada. Narada has this knowledge of the past, present and future and was often called upon to confirm things like this.
Surya said, “that’s cool bro. But you know what, I bet I had something to do with it. Solar power heats air, and that causes air circulation. So if you had tailwinds they were totally because of me”
“Hey you guys want to hear about my trip to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean?” Varuna asked, but no one was paying him any attention.
Indra was right there to egg on Surya. “Sunny, you’re always going on about how you’re the best at everything. You must have gone faster than Vayu, or traveled farther than Varuna?”
“LOL, of course dude. I’ve traveled around the galaxy so fast, your heads will spin. And in the 4.5 billion years that I’ve been around, I’ve traveled throughout the cold depths of space”
Maybe Astronomy facts weren’t the most appropriate things to bring up at exactly that point. At least not so late into a party.
But the natural question that then arose was what could Surya do? What were the limits of his powers?
“I can burn up anything. Anything I say!” said Surya.
“Well then let’s have a contest” Indra chimed in. “Burn up Varuna”
“Eh? What?” asked Varun. He hadn’t expected that.
“No wait,” Narada said. “If the seas all evaporate, it’ll disrupt the water cycle and it’ll mean the end of all life on Earth!”
“Oh go boil your head, Narada” Indra said
“Yeah, spoilsport” Vayu added
But thankfully, Indra changed his tune a little at this point. “Bet I know just the guy you can’t burn up” he told Surya. And then he proceeded to tell him about this King who was a totally rad dude. Wise and brave and empathetic. His name is Vikramaditya.
“Oh, Vik? Why didn’t you say so earlier?” Surya asked. “I heard about him from Narada’s podcast”
Narada’s podcast isn’t much, but it does have a few celebrity listeners.
So anyway, Surya accepted the challenge.
Indra said he’d call Vik. He had the guy on speed dial. “We should hold the contest in a very special place”
“How about Lake Manasarovar? That’s a unique place and it’s secluded. It won’t fill up with selfie-hunters.” So they agreed that that would be the place for Vik to show up. But they had no idea when. Ancient Indian transport being what it was, it was a bit hard to predict how long it would take for Vik to make the trek up to Manasarovar.
And no one bothered to ask why Vik needed to go anywhere further than stepping outside his palace. The Sun was everywhere, no? That would have solved the time problem too
But Vik got Indra’s message. And I guess there weren’t as many spam callers back in the day. So Vik easily believed Indra’s message. No suspicion that this was a prank or something.
It took him an entire month to get there, which is not much longer than what it takes these days on foot.
When he got there, he was hungry, cold and tired. But hey, at least the cold would be taken care of. Indra had just said there was some kind of contest, he was a contestant and that it was going to get warm and toasty for Indra.
Dawn arrived and it was beautiful. Manasarovar was pristine and reflected the tall peaks all around it. Something glinted in the Lake. It seemed like a little circular disk. Curious. Vik decided to investigate. He swam through the icy waters of the Lake and quickly made it to the disk. Only it wasn’t a disk. It was a cylinder. He could see it more clearly now. It was actually a pillar. And it was slowly rising. Quickly, he climbed up the pillar and sat there meditating.
The pillar kept rising in time with the Sun. The Sun kept getting hotter as it rose in the Sky. So that’s what Indra had meant by warm and toasty, Vik figured.
Vik thought that the pillar would probably only be as tall as the Lake was deep. But he was wrong. It rose much, much higher. And it got much much hotter!
The Sun kept turning up the heat. Not intentionally, Surya was just doing his job. Truth be told, he had completely forgotten the contest and was just doing what he normally did. But in that process, as Vik got closer and closer to the Sun, he was burnt and reduced to ashes. Vik didn’t even flinch, not even at the last minute. He just kept meditating.
“Wait a minute” Bhoj interrupted. “If Vik was alone at Manasarovar, no witnesses? How do you know that’s what happened?”
“You didn’t let me finish,” said the Apsara. “Vik did burn up, but Surya noticed what he had done. With his magic powers he reversed what had happened to Vik”
“But why?” asked Bhoj. “dozens of people die of the heat every year”
“Not really, hundreds die. You only hear about the dozens that don’t get restored”
“What? Really?” Bhoj was incredulous
“No, I’m just kidding. Surya restored Vik because he saw this guy on the pillar coming closer and closer. And no one had managed to come that close, ever before. Usually they just jumped off the pillar within a minute or two”
“Okay, so was Indra upset with him then? I mean he’d been backing the wrong horse it looks like” Bhoj asked
“Yeah, we’ll get to that. But I must get to the question first. So tell me Raja Bhoj. Would you have done what Vik did? Would you have sat on the pillar till the very end if you had been in Vik’s place? Would you have gotten burned up, as he was?”
“Well, duh! Obviously not” said Bhoj. “First off, if I got a call from someone called Indra, I would probably ignore them. Spam caller, no doubt. It’s just a chance in a million in your story that it was Indra for real. And even if someone asked me to, I would tell them to go all the way to an obscure isolated place and to go there alone – I’m not doing it. And all this just so that Indra doesn’t lose a bet? When he lost the bet eventually anyway? Sounds silly”
The Apsara sighed. “I guess I didn’t really expect you to match Vik’s choices. But you’ll get 30 more chances, I suppose.”
With that, she flew off and left Bhoj wondering what the next story would be like.
But for that he would have to wait for a while. Maybe a few weeks, maybe a few months. It depended on when he could take the next step and when Narada would write the next Singhasan Battisi episode.
That’s all for now
Some notes on the show
The throne itself was a creation of Indra, the King of Heaven. Impressed by Vikramaditya in a future episode he would give Vik the throne. The throne itself granted the King many powers. However that was not how Vikram solved so many of the Betaal’s problems.
Check these links for the previous Singhasan Battisi story and previous Vikram and Betaal episodes.
We’ve met Varun, Vayu and Surya and Indra in many previous episodes as well
That’s all for now.
Next Time
In the next episode, we’ll do a folk tale from Central India. It’s about a woodcutter who finds something magical in the middle of the forest.